Page:Pictures & poems.djvu/72

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A SEA-SPELL HER lute hangs shadowed in the apple-tree,    While flashing fingers weave the sweet-strung spell  Between its chords; and as the wild notes swell, The sea-bird for those branches leaves the sea. But to what sound her listening ear stoops she?  What netherworld gulf-whispers doth she hear,  In answering echoes from what planisphere, Along the wind, along the estuary? She sinks into her spell: and when full soon  Her lips move and she soars into her song,  What creatures of the midmost main shall throng In furrowed surf-clouds to the summoning rune:  Till he, the fated mariner, hears her cry,  And up her rock, bare-breasted, comes to die?