Digitized by



Qoo^z



1 26 Kathri7ia

" They shiver the bolts that the lightning flings ;
They bellow and roar and hiss ;
They splash the deck with their slimy wings —
Monstrous, horrible, ghastly things —
That climb from the foul abyss.
*• No star shines out at the woman's prayer ;
O ! madly distraught is she !
And the bark drives on with her wild despair,
With shrieking fiends in the crowded air,
And fiends on the swarming sea.
** Then out of the water before their sight
A shape loomed bare and black !

So black that the darkness bloomed with white ;

So black that the lightning grew strangely bright ;
And it lay in the shallop's track!

" O ! fierce was the shout of the goblins then !
How the gibber and laugh went round !
The shout and the laugh of a thousand men,
Echoed and answered, and echoed again,
Would have been a feebler sound.
Digitized by



Qoo^z



Kathrina 1 2 7

" Straight toward the blackness drove the ship ;
But the youth still dung to the mast :
* I have read,' quoth he, with a proud, cold lip,
*That the devil gets never a man on the hip
Whom he scares not, first or last/

" Nearer the blackness loomed ; and the bark
Scudded before the breeze ;
Nearer the blackness loomed, and hark !
The crash of breakers out of the dark,
And the shock of plunging seas !

" O ! woe ! for the woman's wits ran daft
Wilh the fearful bruit and burst ;
She sprang to her feet, and flitting aft,
She plunged in the sea, and the black waves quaffed
The sweet life they had cursed.
