Beloved the Last! Beloved the Most!

Beloved the last! Beloved the most!
With willing arms and brow benign
Receive a bosom tempest-tost,
And bid it ever beat to thine.

 

The Nereid maids, in days of yore,
Saw the lost pilot loose the helm,
Saw the wreck blacken all the shore,
And every wave some head o'erwhelm.

 

Afar the youngest of the train
Beheld (but fear'd and aided not)
A minstrel from the billowy main
Borne breathless near her coral grot.

 

Then terror fled, and pity rose--
"Ah me!" she cried, "I came too late!
Rather than not have sooth'd his woes,
I would, but may not, share his fate."

 

She rais'd his hand. "What hand like this
Could reach the heart athwart the lyre!
What lips like these return my kiss,
Or breathe, incessant, soft desire!"

 

From eve to morn, from morn to eve,
She gazed his features o'er and o'er,
And those who love and who believe
May hear her sigh along the shore.