Well-known, well-loved. She drew it long ago Forth gazing on the waste and open sea, One morning when the upblown billow ran Shoreward beneath red clouds, and I had pour'd Into the shadowing pencil's naked forms Colour and life: it was a bond and seal Of friendship, spoken of with tearful smiles; A monument of childhood and of love, The poesy of childhood; my lost love Symbol'd in storm. We gazed on it together In mute and glad remembrance, and each heart Grew closer to the other, and the eye Was riveted and charm-bound, gazing like The Indian on a still-eyed snake, low crouch'd A beauty which is death, when all at once That painted vessel, as with inner life, 'Gan rock and heave upon that painted sea; An earthquake, my loud heartbeats, made the ground Roll under us, and all at once soul, life, And breath, and motion, pass'd and flow'd away To those unreal billows: round and round A whirlwind caught and bore us; mighty gyves, Rapid and vast, of hissing spray wind-driven Far through the dizzy dark. Aloud she shriek'd-- My heart was cloven with pain. I wound my arms About her: we whirl'd giddily: the wind Sung: but I clasp'd her without fear: her weight Shrank in my grasp, and over my dim eyes And parted lips which drank her breath, down hung The jaws of Death: I, screaming, from me flung The empty phantom: all the sway and whirl Of the storm dropt to windless calm, and I Down welter'd thro' the dark ever and ever. Index to First Lines