For from their prison out o'er all the waves
Has Aeolus the winds let loose, and they,
Without a law to guide them on their way,
Fell on that bark from which the trumpet rang,
A swan whose own sad obsequies it sang.
I from that cliff's stupendous height,
Which dares to intercept the great sun's light,
Looked full of hope along that vessel's track,
To see if it was Philip who came back;
Philip whose flag had borne upon the breeze
Thy royal arms triumphant through the seas;
When his sad wreck swept by,
And every sound was buried in a sigh,
His ruin seemed not wrought by seas or skies,
But by my lips and eyes,
Because my cries, the tears that made me blind,
Increased still more the water and the wind.

KING. How! ye immortal deities,
Would you still try by threatenings such as these
What I can bear?
Is it your wish that I should mount and tear
This azure palace down, as if the shape
Of a new Nimrod* I assumed, to show
How on my shoulders might the world escape,
Nor as I gazed below
Feel any fear, though all the abysses under
Were rent with fire and flame, with lightning and with thunder.