He draws a long breath as the breaker he leaves,
Then swims through the water with many a strain,
While all his companions exultingly heave
Their voices above the wild din of the main:
“’Tis he, O! ’tis he, from the horrible hole
The brave one has rescued his body and soul.”
He reach’d the tall jetty, and kneeling he laid
The massy gold goblet in triumph and pride
At the foot of the monarch, who instantly made
A sign to his daughter who stood by his side:
She fill’d it with wine, and the youth with a spring
Received it, and quaff’d it, and turn’d to the King.
“Long life to the monarch! how happy are they
Who breathe and exist in the sun’s rosy light,
But he who is doom’d in the ocean to stray,
Views nothing around him but horror and night;
Let no one henceforward be tempted like me
To pry in the secrets contain’d in the sea.
“I felt myself seized, with the quickness of thought
The whirlpool entomb’d me in body and limb,
And billow on billow tumultuously brought
It’s cataracts o’er me; in vain did I swim,
For like a mere pebble with horrible sound
The force of the double stream twisted me round.
“But God in his mercy, for to him alone
In the moment of danger I ever have clung,
Did bear me towards a projection of stone:
I seized it in transport, and round it I hung,
The goblet lay too on a corally ledge,
Which jutted just over the cataract’s edge.
“And then I look’d downward, and horribly deep,
And twinkling sheen in the darkness below,
And though to the hearing it ever might sleep,
Yet still the eye clouded with terror might know,
That serpents and creatures that made my blood cool,
Were swimming and splashing about in the pool.
“Ball’d up to a mass, in a moment uncoil’d,
They rose, and again disappear’d in the dark,
And down in the billows which over them boil’d
I saw a behemoth contend with a shark;
The sounds of their hideous duel awaken
The black-bellied whale, and the slumbering craken.
“Still, still did I linger forlorn, and oppress’d
With a feeling of terror that curdled my blood;
Ah think of a human and sensible breast
Enclosed with the hideous shapes of the flood;
Still, still did I linger, but far from the reach
Of those that I knew would await on the beach.
“Methought that a serpent towards me did creep,
And trailing behind him whole fathoms of length,
He open’d his jaws; and I dropp’d from the steep
Round which I had clung with expiring strength:
’Twas well that I did so, the stream bore me up,
And here is thy servant, and there is the cup.”
He then was retiring, a look from the King
Detain’d him: “My hero, the cup is thine own,
’Tis richly thy meed, but I’ll give thee this ring,
Beset with a diamond and chrysolite stone,
If again thou wilt dive, and discover to me
What’s hid in the deepest abyss of the sea.”