And he is wandering by the shore again, Hard leaning on his staff; the azure main Lies sleeping far before him, with his seas Fast folded in the bosom of the breeze, That like the angel Peace, hath dropt his wings Around the warring waters. Sadly sings To his own heart that lonely hermit-man, A tale of other days when passion ran Along his pulses like a troubled stream, And glory was a splendor and a dream! He stoop’d to gather up a shining gem That lay amid the shells, as bright as them, It was a cross, the cross that Agathè Had given to her Julio; the play Of the fierce sunbeams fell upon its face, And on the glistening jewels—but the trace Of some old thought came burning to the brain Of the pale hermit, and he shrunk in pain Before the holy symbol. It was not Because of the eternal ransom wrought In ages far away, or he had bent In pure devotion, sad and reverent; But now, he startled as he look’d upon That jewell’d thing, and wildly he is gone Back to the mossy grave, away, away: “My child, my child! my own, own Agathè!” It is her father,—he,—an alter’d man! His quiet had been wounded, and the ban Of misery came over him, and froze The bright and holy tides, that fell and rose In joy amid his heart. To think of her, That he had injured so, and all so fair, So fond, so like the chosen of his youth,— It was a very dismal thought, in truth, That he had left her hopelessly, for aye, Within the cloister-wall to droop, and die! And so he could not bear to have it be; But sought for some lone island in the sea, Where he might dwell in doleful solitude, And do strange penance in his mirthful mood, For this same crime, unnaturally wild, That he had done unto his saintly child. And ever he did think, when he had laid These lovers in the grave, that, through the shade Of ghostly features melting to decay, He saw the image of his Agathè. And now the truth had flash’d into his brain: And he has fallen, with a shriek of pain, Upon the lap of pale and yellow moss; For long ago he gave that blessed cross To his fair girl, and knew the relic still, By many a thousand thoughts, that rose at will Before it of the one that was not now, But, like a dream, had floated from the brow Of time, that seeth many a lovely thing Fade by him, like a sea-wave murmuring.