The coming of love :: :: University of Virginia Library

(Percy on the deck of “The Petrel” after he has been separated from Rhona.)
Was it indeed but two sweet years ago
When once a sailor on a star-lit sea
Babbled about its spell, and did not know
How Love makes Nature breathe her poesy?
When did the sea-spell vanish? On that day
When his beloved petrel flew away.
But as for them who bade him, made him, come,
Though love had crowned him man, to thee, wild Ocean,
Prated of some nepenthe in thy foam
To quell his love as by a magic potion—
Some anodyne within thy billowy swirl
To soothe the body—make the soul forget
Its guileless passion for a “guileful girl”

Whose beauty caught him in a “Gypsy net”—
They should be here to see these billows heaving
Beneath yon Southern Cross that holds the sky,
They should be here to see how thou art weaving
Pictures of home by ocean-sorcery!
A dingle's fragrance breathed from every billow,
Sweeter than Orient frankincense and myrrh—
A slim girl-angler shown beneath a willow,
Leaning against its mossy bole for pillow,
Must needs recall his every thought to her!