The sea-bird sitteth lonely by the side Of the far waste of waters, flapping wide His wet and weary wings; but he is gone, The stricken Julio! a wave-swept stone Stands there, on which he sat, and nakedly It rises looking to the lonely sea; But Julio is gone, and Agathè! The waters swept them madly to their core— The dead and living with a frantic roar! And so he died, his bosom fondly set On hers; and round her clay-cold waist were met His bare and wither’d arms, and to her brow His lips were press’d. Both, both are perish’d now! He died upon her bosom in a swoon: And fancied of the pale and silver moon, That went before him in her hall of blue; He died like golden insect in the dew, Calm, calm and pure; and not a chord was wrung In his deep heart—but love. He perish’d young, But perish’d wasted by some fatal flame That fed upon his vitals: and there came Lunacy, sweeping lightly, like a stream, Along his brain—he perish’d in a dream! In sooth I marvel not If death be only a mysterious thought, That cometh on the heart and turns the brow Brightless and chill, as Julio’s is now; For only had the wasting struggle been Of one wild feeling, till it rose within Into the form of death, and nature felt The light of the immortal being melt Into its happier home beyond the sea, And moon, and stars, into eternity! The sun broke through his dungeon, long enthrall’d By dismal clouds, and on the emerald Of the great living sea was blazing down To gift the lordly billows with a crown Of diamond and silver. From his cave The hermit came, and by the dying wave Lone wander’d, and he found upon the sand, Below a truss of sea-weed, with his hand Around the silent waist of Agathè The corse of Julio! Pale, pale, it lay Beside the wasted girl. The fireless eye Was open, and a jewell’d rosary Flung round the neck; but it was gone—the cross That Agathè had given. Amid the moss The hermit scoop’d a solitary grave Below the pine-trees, and he sang a stave, Or two, or three, of some old requiem As in their narrow home he buried them; And many a day before that blessed spot He sate, in lone and melancholy thought, Gazing upon the grave; and one had guess’d Of some dark secret shadowing his breast. And yet, to see him, with his silver hair Adrift and floating in the sea-borne air, And features chasten’d in the tears of woe, In sooth, ’twas merely sad to see him so! A wreck of nature floating far and fast, Upon the stream of Time—to sink at last!