The snowy sail Is hoisted to the gladly gushing gale, That bosom’d its fair canvass with a breast Of silver, looking lovely to the west; And at the helm there sits the wither’d one, Gazing and gazing on the sister nun, With her fair tresses floating on his knee— The beautiful death-stricken Agathè! Fast, fast, and far away, the bark hath stood Out toward the great heaving solitude, That gurgled in its deeps, as if the breath Went through its lungs of agony and death! The sun is lost within the labyrinth Of clouds of purple and pale hyacinth, That are the frontlet of the sister sky Kissing her brother ocean; and they lie Bathing in blushes, till the rival queen, Night, with her starry tiar, floateth in— A dark and dazzling beauty! that doth draw Over the light of love a shade of awe Most strange, that parts our wonder not the less Between her mystery and loveliness! And she is there, that is a Pyramid Whereon the stars, the statues of the dead, Are imaged over the eternal hall, A group of radiances majestical! And Julio looks up, and there they be, And Agathè, and all the waste of sea, That slept in wizard slumber, with a shroud Of night flung o’er his bosom, throbbing proud Amid its azure pulses, and again He dropt his blighted eye-orbs, with a strain Of mirth upon the ladye:—Agathè! Sweet bride! be thou a queen and I will lay A crown of sea-weed on thy royal brow! And I will twine these tresses, that are now Floating beside me, to a diadem: And the sea foam will sprinkle gem on gem, And so will the soft dews. Be thou the queen Of the unpeopled waters, sadly seen By star-light, till the yet unrisen moon Issue, unveiled, from her anteroom, To bathe in the sea fountains: let me say, “Hail—hail to thee! thrice hail, my Agathè!”