Hero and Leander and Other Poems

by Christopher Marlowe

"Hero and Leander and Other Poems" by Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman is a poem first published in 1598. It retells the Greek myth of two young lovers separated by the Hellespont, a narrow sea strait. Hero, a priestess devoted to Venus, meets Leander at a festival. He falls desperately in love and promises to swim across the treacherous waters each night to reach her tower. Their passionate encounters unfold with extravagant emotion and violent intensity, but Marlowe's untimely death left the poem unfinished—later completed by Chapman.