Fable to Be Learnt by Beginners

There lived a diver once whose boast
Was that he brought up treasures lost,
However deep, beneath the sea
Of glossy-hair'd Parthenope.
To try him, people oft threw in
A silver cross or gold zecchin.
Down went the diver " fathoms nine,"
And you might see the metal shine
Between his lips or on his head,
While lazy Tethys lay abed,
And not a Nereid round her heard
The green pearl-spangled curtain stir'd.
One day a tempting fiend threw down,
Where whirl'd the waves, a tinsel crown,
And said, "O diver, you who dive
Deeper than any man alive,
And see, where other folks are blind,
And, what all others miss, can find,
You saw the splendid crown I threw
Into the whirlpool: now can you
Recover it? thus won, you may
Wear it . . not once, but every day,
So may your sons." Down, down he sprang . .
A hundred Nereids heard the clang,
And closed him round and held him fast . .
The diver there had dived his last.