In the moment of danger I ever have clung,
Did bear me towards a projection of stone:
I seized it in transport, and round it I hung,
The goblet lay too on a corally ledge,
Which jutted just over the cataract’s edge.

“And then I look’d downward, and horribly deep,
And twinkling sheen in the darkness below,
And though to the hearing it ever might sleep,
Yet still the eye clouded with terror might know,
That serpents and creatures that made my blood cool,
Were swimming and splashing about in the pool.

“Ball’d up to a mass, in a moment uncoil’d,
They rose, and again disappear’d in the dark,
And down in the billows which over them boil’d
I saw a behemoth contend with a shark;
The sounds of their hideous duel awaken
The black-bellied whale, and the slumbering craken.

“Still, still did I linger forlorn, and oppress’d
With a feeling of terror that curdled my blood;
Ah think of a human and sensible breast
Enclosed with the hideous shapes of the flood;
Still, still did I linger, but far from the reach
Of those that I knew would await on the beach.

“Methought that a serpent towards me did creep,
And trailing behind him whole fathoms of length,
He open’d his jaws; and I dropp’d from the steep
Round which I had clung with expiring strength:
’Twas well that I did so, the stream bore me up,
And here is thy servant, and there is the cup.”

He then was retiring, a look from the King
Detain’d him: “My hero, the cup is thine own,
’Tis richly thy meed, but I’ll give thee this ring,
Beset with a diamond and chrysolite stone,
If again thou wilt dive, and discover to me
What’s hid in the deepest abyss of the sea.”

The daughter heard that with compassionate thought,
Quick, quick to the feet of the monarch she flew:
“O father, desist from this horrible sport,
He has done what no other would venture to do,
If the life of a creature thou fain must destroy,
Let a noble take place of this generous boy.”

The monarch has taken the cup in his hand,
And tumbled it down in the bellowing sea:
“And if thou canst bring it again to the strand,
The first, and the best of my knights thou shalt be;
If that will not tempt thee, this maid thou shalt wed,
And share as a husband the joys of her bed.”

Then the pride of old Eirin arose in his look,
And it flash’d from his eye-balls courageously keen,
One glance on the beautiful vision he took,
And he saw her change colour, and sink on the green.
“By the stool of Saint Peter the prize I’ll obtain;”
He shouted, and instantly dived in the main.

The waters sunk down, and a thundering peal
Announced that the time of their sojourn was o’er;
Each eye is cast downward in terrified zeal,
As forth from the tunnel the cataracts pour.
The waters rush up, and the waters subside;
But ah! the bold diver remains in the tide.