"
Is this not melodious madness, and is this picture of the distraught
priest, setting forth to sail the seas with his dead lady, not an
invention that Nanteuil might have illustrated, and the clan of
Bousingots approved?
The Second Chimera opens nobly:--
"A curse! a curse! {8} the beautiful pale wing
Of a sea-bird was worn with wandering,
And, on a sunny rock beside the shore,
It stood, the golden waters gazing o'er;
And they were nearing a brown amber flow
Of weeds, that glittered gloriously below!"
Julio appears with Agathe in his arms, and what ensues is excellent of
its kind:--
"He dropt upon a rock, and by him placed,
Over a bed of sea-pinks growing waste,
The silent ladye, and he mutter'd wild,
Strange words about a mother and no child.
"And I shall wed thee, Agathe! although
Ours be no God-blest bridal--even so!"
And from the sand he took a silver shell,
That had been wasted by the fall and swell
Of many a moon-borne tide into a ring--
A rude, rude ring; it was a snow-white thing,
Where a lone hermit limpet slept and died
In ages far away. 'Thou art a bride,
Sweet Agathe! Wake up; we must not linger!'
He press'd the ring upon her chilly finger,
And to the sea-bird on its sunny stone
Shouted, 'Pale priest that liest all alone
Upon thy ocean altar, rise, away
To our glad bridal!' and its wings of gray
All lazily it spread, and hover'd by
With a wild shriek--a melancholy cry!
Then, swooping slowly o'er the heaving breast
Of the blue ocean, vanished in the west.
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