Vain, vain was my struggle--the circle had won me,
Round and round in its dance, the wild element spun me.

"And I call'd on my God, and my God heard my prayer
In the strength of my need, in the gasp of my breath--
And show'd me a crag that rose up from the lair,
And I clung to it, nimbly--and baffled the death!
And, safe in the perils around me, behold
On the spikes of the coral the goblet of gold!

"Below, at the foot of the precipice drear,
Spread the gloomy, and purple, and pathless Obscure!
A silence of Horror that slept on the ear,
That the eye more appall'd might the Horror endure!
Salamander--snake--dragon--vast reptiles that dwell
In the deep-coil'd about the grim jaws of their hell.

"Dark-crawl'd--glided dark the unspeakable swarms,
Clump'd together in masses, misshapen and vast--
Here clung and here bristled the fashionless forms--
Here the dark-moving bulk of the Hammer-fish pass'd--
And with teeth grinning white, and a menacing motion,
Went the terrible Shark--the Hyena of Ocean.

"There I hung, and the awe gather'd icily o'er me,
So far from the earth, where man's help there was none!
The One Human Thing, with the Goblins before me--
Alone--in a loneness so ghastly--ALONE!
Fathom-deep from man's eye in the speechless profound,
With the death of the Main and the Monsters around.