MARINA SINGS
(Pericles, Act V. Scene I)
This is the song Marina sang
To forlorn Pericles:
Silver the young voice rang.
The gray beard blew about his knees,
And the hair of his bowed head, like a veil,
Fell over his cheeks and blent with it:
He knew not anything.
Above him the Tyrian fold
Of the curtain billowed, fringed with gold,
As might beseem a king.
Sunset was rose on every sail
That did along the far sea flit,
And rose on the cedarn deck
Of the ship that at anchor swayed;
And the harbour was golden-lit.
He lifted not his neck
At the coming of the maid.
She swept him with her eyes,
As though some tender wing
Just touched a bleaching wreck
In sheeted sand that lies;
Then she began to sing.
THE SONG
Hush, ah hush! the sea is kind!
Lullaby is in the wind;
Grief the babe forgets to weep,
Lapped and spelled and laid to sleep:
His lip is wet with the milk of the spray;
He shall not wake till another day.
Ah hush! the sea is kind!
Who can tell, ah who can tell,
The cradling nurse’s croonèd spell?
While the slumber-web she weaves
Never nursling stirs or grieves:
The tears that drowned his sweet eye-beams
Are turned to mists of rainbow dreams.
Ah hush! she charms us well!
“All thy hurts I balm and bind;
All thy heart’s loves thou shalt find!”
Yea, this she murmurs, best of all:
“It was not loss that did befall!
All thy joys are put away;
They shall be thine another day!”
Ah hush! the sea is kind!
She sang; she trembled like a lyre;
Her pure eyes burned with azure fire;
About her lucent brow the hair
Played like light flames divine ones wear:
The maid was very fair.
But when she saw he gave no heed,—
Close-mantled up in ancient pain
As in some sad-wound weed,
Dumb as a shape of stone,
Being years past all moan,—
She tried no other strain,
But softly spake: “Most royal sir!”
He raised his head and looked at her.
So might a castaway, half dead,
Lift up his haggard head,
Waked by the swirl of sudden rain,
A cool, unhoped-for grace,
Against his tearless face:
And see, with happy-crazèd mind,
Upon his raft a Bright One stand,—
His love of youth, her grave long left behind
In some sweet-watered land.