Pictures & poems/A Sea-Spell

by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

A Sea-Spell

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?