I sat entranced: the lover of my dreams. He, to whom nightly I had poured my sighs, The ideal of my soul, stood visibly before my waking eyes. Calmly the Self-Devoted stood and smiled,— Thésëus, king-born, with his radiant face Flushed with the glory of a fame which pierced the ultimate star of space. My heart waxed sick, for I was woman, Jove: I saw the grim and ghastly Minotaur Move through the Cretan labyrinth—his deadly, ponderous jaws ajar. I saw my brother fall by felon hands; I saw my father’s galleys sweep the seas, And humbled Athens, cowering like a slave, ask mercy from her knees. Minos pronounced his doom: the morrow morn Beheld the sacrifice. I would have wept, But could not: in their heated cells the sought for tears in silence slept. I pitied him; I could not see him die; I loved—was woman; though my brother’s blood Cried out for vengeance, still I pitied him: pity was passion’s food. My soul sat in his shadow: like a babe Beneath an oak it sat, and smiled, and crowed, And lifted up and clapped its happy hands, and wildly laughed aloud. That night I sought his cell: O, happy night, O, night of light and life: the magic clew That Dædälos wrought was in his hands; I drank his red lip’s nectarous dew, For he, too, loved! O, Jove, my long-caged heart In that mad moment felt its shackles riven, And soared and soared and soared, till, like a star, it coursed the heights of heaven. Next day I prayed—O, how I prayed: the gods Were merciful: that night—O, night of nights, For in its hours the Past became entombed—O, realm of dead delights, We fled from Crete, and, steering out to sea, I dreaming always on his manly breast, At last made land—a desolate wave-worn strand, the sea-gull’s sandy nest. I seemed to wake, and found the traitor gone: I stood in anguish, desolate and lone, Wasting my wailings on the flinty rocks whose hearts (like his) were stone. But still I dreamed, and once more Athens rose Before my eyes. Upon a beetling rock That overhung the sea—a cliff, whose crags throbbed in the ocean’s shock— Ægéus stood and gazed athwart the wave. Then I remembered me how Thésëus swore (Such was his tale to me,) that, ere he sailed from Athens’ sorrowing shore, Hopefully trusting in the awful gods, If he returned, his canvas, changed to white, Should mark his triumph, but did raven sails meet Athens’ weeping sight, Then he had fallen. How the old man gazed, With moistened eyes, toward the horizon’s verge, While, far beneath, the chanting surf sent up its melancholy dirge. I also gazed—when, where the sea and sky Blended in mist, a speck—a spot—a nail— Came with the wind: Ægéus stood erect, convulsed and deathly pale.