he comes, with the crowd in their clamor and glee;
And the goblet his daring has won from the water
He lifts to the king as he sinks on his knee
And the king from her maidens has beckon'd his daughter.
She pours to the boy the bright wine which they bring,
And thus spoke the diver; "Long life to the King!

"Happy they whom the rose-hues of daylight rejoice,
The air and the sky that to mortals are given!
May the horror below nevermore find a voice,--
Nor man stretch too far the wide mercy of Heaven!
Nevermore,--nevermore may he lift from the sight
The veil which is woven with terror and night!

"Quick brightening like lightning the ocean rush'd o'er me,
Wild floating, borne down fathom-deep from the day;
Till a torrent rush'd out on the torrents that bore me,
And doubled the tempest that whirl'd me away.
Vain, vain was my struggle,--the circle had won me,
Round and round in its dance the mad element spun me.

"From the deep then I call'd upon God, and He heard me;
In the dread of my need, He vouchsafed to mine eye
A rock jutting out from the grave that interr'd me;
I sprung there, I clung there,--and death pass'd me by.
And, lo! where the goblet gleam'd through the abyss,
By a coral reef saved from the far Fathomless.

"Below, at the foot of that precipice drear,
Spread the gloomy and purple and pathless Obscure!
A silence of horror that slept on the ear,
That the eye more appall'd might the horror endure;
Salamander, snake, dragon--vast reptiles that dwell
In the deep--coil'd about the grim jaws of their hell.

"Dark crawl'd, glided dark, the unspeakable swarms,
Clump'd together in masses, misshapen and vast;
Here clung and here bristled the fashionless forms;
Here the dark-moving bulk of the hammer-fish pass'd;
And, with teeth grinning white, and a menacing motion,
Went the terrible shark,--the hyena of ocean.

"There I hung, and the awe gather'd icily o'er me,
So far from the earth, where man's help there was none!
The one human thing, with the goblins before me--
Alone--in a loneness so ghastly--ALONE!
Deep under the reach of the sweet living breath,
And begirt with the broods of the desert of Death.

"Methought, as I gazed through the darkness, that now
IT saw--a dread hundred-limb'd creature--its prey!