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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=539831" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Princes Quest - Part the Sixth</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Even as one voice the great sea sang. From out<br>The green heart of the waters round about,<br>Welled as a bubbling fountain silverly<br>The overflowing song of the great sea;<br>Until the Prince, by dint of listening long,<br>Divined the purport of that mystic song;<br>(For so do all things breathe articulate breath<br>Into his ears who rightly harkeneth)<br>And, if indeed he heard that harmony<br>Aright, in this wise came the song of the sea:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Behold all ye that stricken of love do lie,<br>Wherefore in manacles of a maiden's eye<br>Lead ye the life of bondmen and of slaves?<br>Lo in the caverns and the depths of Me<br>A thousand mermaids dwell beneath the waves:<br>A thousand maidens meet for love have I,<br>Ev'n I the virgin-hearted cold chaste sea.<br>Behold all ye that weary of life do lie,<br>There is no rest at all beneath the sky<br>Save in the nethermost deepness of the deep.<br>Only the silence and the midst of Me<br>Can still the sleepless soul that fain would sleep;<br>For such, a cool death and a sweet have I,<br>Ev'n I the crystal-hearted cool sweet sea.<br>Behold all ye that in my lap do lie,<br>To love is sweet and sweeter still to die,<br>And woe to him that laugheth me to scorn!<br>Lo in a little while the anger of Me<br>Shall make him mourn the day that he was born:<br>For in mine hour of wrath no ruth have I,<br>Ev'n I the tempest-hearted pitiless sea.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So sang the waters, if indeed 'twere they<br>That sang unto the Prince's ears that day,<br>Since in the ship was not a soul besides<br>Could hear that burden of the voiceful tides;<br>For when he told the sailors of this thing,<br>And ev'n what words the waters seemed to sing,<br>They stared astonishment, and some, that had<br>More churlish souls than others, held him mad,<br>And laughed before his face outright. But when<br>The captain heard the gossip of his men<br>Touching this marvel, the strange news begot<br>No merry mood in him, who wist not what<br>Should be the meaning of the miracle,<br>Nor whether 'twere an omen good or ill.<br>Wherefore the old seafarer-having heard<br>The tale retold with many an afterword<br>The mariners' own most fruitful wit supplied<br>To grace the telling-took the Prince aside,<br>And ask'd him sundry questions privily<br>Concerning this same singing of the sea.<br>So the Prince told him all there was to tell,<br>And when that he had heard, the old man fell<br>To meditating much, and shook his head<br>As one exceeding ill at ease, and said,<br>'I doubt the singing thou hast heard was no<br>Voice of the waters billowing below,<br>But rather of some evil spirit near,<br>Who sought with singing to beguile thine ear,<br>Spreading a snare to catch the soul of thee<br>In meshes of entangling melody,<br>Which taketh captive the weak minds of men.<br>Therefore if thou should'st hear the sound again,<br>Look thou content thee not with hearkening,<br>But cast thine eyes around, and mark what thing<br>Thou seëst, and let no man know but me.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So spake the white-haired wanderer of the sea.<br>And on the morrow-when the sealine grew<br>O'erhazed with visible heat, and no wind blew,<br>And the half-stifled morning dropt aswoon<br>Into the panting bosom of the noon-<br>There came into the Prince's ears anew<br>The song that yestermorn had hearkened to.<br>And lifting up his eyes in hope to see<br>What lips they were that made such melody<br>And filled him with the fulness of their sound,<br>He saw the sun at highest of his round<br>Show as a shield with one dark bloodstain blurred,<br>By reason of the body of some great bird<br>Like to an eagle, with wide wings outspread,<br>Athwart the sunfire hovering duskly red.<br>So to the master of the ship he told<br>What he had witnessed, bidding him behold<br>The marvel with his own eyes if he would;<br>Who, though he strained his vision all he could,<br>Yet might not once endure to look the sun<br>I' the face; and calling to him one by one<br>The whole ship's crew, he bade each mariner look<br>Sunward who could, but no man's eyes might brook<br>The glare upon them of the noontide rays<br>And lidless fervour of that golden gaze:<br>So none of them beheld the bodeful bird.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then said the greybeard captain, hardly heard<br>Amid the babble of voices great and small,<br>'The bird thou seëst is no bird at all,<br>But some unholy spirit in guise of one;<br>And I do fear that we are all undone<br>If any amongst us hearken to its voice;-<br>For of its mouth, I doubt not, was the noise<br>Thou heardest as of dulcet carolling,<br>When at thine ear the waters seemed to sing.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And truly, many a wiser man than he<br>Herein had farther strayed from verity;<br>For that great bird that seemed to fan the sun's<br>Face with its wings was even the same as once<br>Flew screaming westward o'er the Prince's head,<br>Beguiling him to follow where it fled.<br>And bird it was not, but a spirit of ill,<br>Man-hating, and of mankind hated still,<br>And slave to one yet mightier demon-sprite<br>Whose dwelling is the shadow of the night.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So the days passed, and always on the next<br>The bird-sprite like a baleful vision vexed<br>The happy-hearted sunlight; and each time<br>Its false sweet song was wedded to the rhyme<br>And chime of wind and wave-although it dropped<br>As honey changed to music-the Prince stopped<br>His ears, and would not hear; and so the Sprite,<br>Seeing his charmèd songcraft of no might<br>Him to ensnare who hearkened not at all,<br>On the tenth day with dreadful noise let fall<br>A tempest shaken from the wings of him,<br>Whereat the eyes of heaven wox thunderous-dim,<br>Till the day-darkness blinded them, and fell<br>Holding the world in night unseasonable.<br>And from his beakèd mouth the demon blew<br>A breath as of a hundred winds, and flew<br>Downward aswoop upon the labouring bark,<br>And, covered of the blear untimely Dark,<br>Clutch'd with his gripple claws the Prince his prey,<br>And backward through the tempest soared away,<br>Bearing that royal burden; and his eyes<br>Were wandering wells of lightning to the skies.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Long time the Prince was held in swound, and knew<br>Nor outer world nor inner, as they flew<br>From darkness unto darkness; till at last-<br>The fierce flight over, and his body cast<br>Somewhere alone in a strange place-the life<br>Stirred in him faintly, as at feeble strife<br>With covetous Death for ownership of him.<br>And 'fore his eyes the world began to swim<br>All vague, and doubtful as a dream that lies<br>Folded within another, petal-wise.<br>And therewithal himself but half believed<br>His own eyes' testimony, and perceived<br>The things that were about him as who hears<br>A distant music throbbing toward his ears<br>At noontide, in a flowery hollow of June,<br>And listens till he knows not if the tune<br>And he be one or twain, or near or far,<br>But only feels that sound and perfume are,<br>And tremulous light and leafy umbrage: so<br>The Prince beheld unknowing, nor fain to know.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">About him was a ruinous fair place,<br>Which Time, who still delighteth to abase<br>The highest, and throw down what men do build,<br>With splendid prideful barrenness had filled,<br>And dust of immemorial dreams, and breath<br>Of silence, which is next of kin to death.<br>A weedy wilderness it seemed, that was<br>In days forepast a garden, but the grass<br>Grew now where once the flowers, and hard by<br>A many-throated fountain had run dry<br>Which erst all day a web of rainbows wove<br>Out of the body of the sun its love.<br>And but a furlong's space beyond, there towered<br>In middest of that silent realm deflowered<br>A palace builded of black marble, whence<br>The shadow of a swart magnificence<br>Falling, upon the outer space begot<br>A dream of darkness when the night was not.<br>Which while the Prince beheld, a wonderment<br>Laid hold upon him, that he rose and went<br>Toward the palace-portico apace,<br>Thinking to read the riddle of the place.<br>And entering in (for open was the door)<br>From hall to hall he passed, from floor to floor,<br>Through all the spacious house, and (saving where<br>The subtile spider had his darksome lair)<br>No living creature could he find in it.<br>Howbeit, by certain writing that was writ<br>Upon the wall of one dark room and bare,<br>He guessed that some great sorcerer had there<br>Inhabited, a slave to his own lust<br>Of evil power and knowledge, till the dust<br>Received his dust, and darkness had his soul;<br>But ere death took him he had willed the whole<br>Of his possessions to a Spirit of Ill,<br>His sometime mate in commerce damnable,<br>Making him lord of that high house, wherein<br>The twain had sealed their covenant of sin.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">With that a horror smote the Prince, and fain<br>Would he have fled that evil spirit's domain<br>And shook its dust from off his feet that hour.<br>But from a window of the topmost tower<br>Viewing the dim-leaved wilderness without,<br>Full plainly he perceived it hemmed about<br>With waves, an island of the middle sea,<br>In watery barriers bound insuperably;<br>And human habitation saw he none,<br>Nor heard one bird a-singing in the sun<br>To lighten the intolerable stress<br>Of utter undisputed silentness.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So by these signs he knew himself the thrall<br>Of that foul spirit unseen, and therewithal<br>Wholly unfellowed in captivity,<br>Bound round with fetters of the tyrannous sea.<br>And sick for very loneliness, he passed<br>Downward through galleries and chambers vast<br>To one wide hall wherefrom a vestibule<br>Opened into a dim green space and cool,<br>Where great trees grew that various fruitage bore<br>The like whereof he had not seen before,<br>And hard by was a well of water sweet;<br>And being anhungered he did pluck and eat<br>The strange fair fruit, and being athirst did drink<br>The water, and lay down beside the brink;<br>Till sleep, as one that droppeth from the skies,<br>Dropt down, and made a mist about his eyes.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=William+Watson">William Watson</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=539831" data-title="The Princes Quest - Part the Sixth de William Watson" data-description="Even as one voice the great sea sang. From out
The green heart of the waters round about,
Welled as a bubbling fountain silverly
The overflowing song of the great sea;
Until the Prince, by dint of listening long,
Divined the purport of that mystic..."></div>
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