I read it in the story-book, that, for to kiss his dear,
Leander swam the Hellespont,—and I will swim this here.
And he has leaped into the waves, and crossed the shining stream,
And he has clambered up the bank, all in the moonlight gleam;
Oh, there were kisses sweet as dew, and words as soft as rain,
But they have heard her father’s step, and in he leaps again.
(The lover is seized with the cramp and is drowned,
and the maiden never awakens from her “swound.”)
Fate has metamorphosed them, in pity of their woe,
And now they keep an oyster-shop for mermaids down below.
Holmes.