Rowing, I reach’d a rock – the sea was low –
Which the tides cover in their overflow,
Marking the spot, when they have gurgled o’er,
With a thin floating veil of water hoar.
A mile astern lay the blue shores away;
And it was at the setting of the day.
Plum-purple was the west; but spikes of light
Spear’d open lustrous gashes, crimson-white;
(Where the eye fix’d, fled the encrimsoning spot,
And, gathering, floated where the gaze was not;)
And through their parting lids there came and went
Keen glimpses of the inner firmament:
Fair beds they seem’d of water-lily flakes
Clustering entrancingly in beryl lakes:
Anon, across their swimming splendour strook,
An intense line of throbbing blood-light shook
A quivering pennon; then, for eye too keen,
Ebb’d back beneath its snowy lids, unseen.
Now all things rosy turn’d: the west had grown
To an orb’d rose, which, by hot pantings blown
Apart, betwixt ten thousand petall’d lips
By interchange gasp’d splendour and eclipse.
The zenith melted to a rose of air;
The waves were rosy-lipp’d; the crimson glare
Shower’d the cliffs and every fret and spire
With garnet wreathes and blooms of rosy-budded fire.
Then, looking on the waters, I was ware
Of something drifting through delighted air,
– An isle of roses, – and another near; –
And more, on each hand, thicken, and appear
In shoals of bloom; as in unpeopled skies,
Save by two stars, more crowding lights arise,
And planets bud where’er we turn our mazèd eyes.
I gazed unhinder’d: Mermaids six or seven,
Ris’n from the deeps to gaze on sun and heaven,
Cluster’d in troops and halo’d by the light,
Those Cyclads made that thicken’d on my sight.
This was their manner: one translucent crest
Of tremulous film, more subtle than the vest
Of dewy gorse blurr’d with the gossamer fine,
From crown to tail-fin floating, fringed the spine,
Droop’d o’er the brows like Hector’s casque, and sway’d
In silken undulations, spurr’d and ray’d
With spikèd quills all of intensest hue;
And was as tho’ some sapphire molten-blue
Were vein’d and streak’d with dusk-deep lazuli,
Or tender pinks with bloody Tyrian dye.
From their white waists a silver skirt was spread
To mantle o’er the tail, such as is shed
Around the Water-Nymphs in fretted falls,
At red Pompeii on medallion’d walls.
A tinted fin on either shoulder hung:
Their pansy-dark or bronzen locks were strung
With coral, shells, thick-pearlèd cords, whate’er
The abysmal Ocean hoards of strange and rare.
Some trail’d the Nautilus: or on the swell
Tugg’d the boss’d, smooth-lipp’d, giant Strombus-shell.
Some carried the sea-fan; some round the head
With lace of rosy weed were chapleted;
One bound o’er dripping gold a turquoise-gemm’d
Circle of astral flowerets – diadem’d
Like an Assyrian prince, with buds unsheath’d
From flesh-flowers of the rock; but more were wreath’d
With the dainty-delicate fretted fringe of fingers
Of that jacinthine thing, that, where it lingers
Broiders the nets with fans of amethyst
And silver films, beneath with pearly mist,
The Glaucus cleped; others small braids encluster’d
Of glassy-clear Aeolis, metal-lustred
With growths of myriad feelers, crystalline
To show the crimson streams that inward shine,
Which, lightening o’er the body rosy-pale,
Like shiver’d rubies’ dance or sheen of sapphire frail.
Then saw I sudden from the waters break
Far off a Nereid company, and shake
From wings swan-fledged a wheel of watery light
Flickering with sunny spokes, and left and right
Plunge orb’d in rainbow arcs, and trample and tread
The satin-purfled smooth to foam, and spread
Slim-pointed sea-gull plumes, and droop behind
One scarlet feather trailing to the wind;
Then, like a flock of sea-fowl mounting higher,
Thro’ crimson-golden floods pass swallow’d into fire.
Soon – as when Summer of his sister Spring
Crushes and tears the rare enjewelling,
And boasting ‘I have fairer things than these’
Plashes amidst the billowy apple-trees
His lusty hands, in gusts of scented wind
Swirling out bloom till all the air is blind
With rosy foam and pelting blossom and mists
Of driving vermeil-rain; and, as he lists,
The dainty onyx-coronals deflowers,
A glorious wanton; – all the wrecks in showers
Crowd down upon a stream, and, jostling thick
With bubbles bugle-eyed, struggle and stick
On tangled shoals that bar the brook – a crowd
Of filmy globes and rosy floating cloud:
So those Mermaidens crowded to my rock,
And thicken’d, like that drifted bloom, the flock
Sun-flush’d, until it seem’d their father Sea
Had gotten him a wreath of sweet Spring-broidery.
Careless of me they sported: some would plash
The languent smooth with dimpling drops, and flash
Their filmy tails adown whose length there show’d
An azure ridge; or clouds of violet glow’d
On prankèd scale; or threads of carmine, shot
Thro’ with silver, gloom’d to a blood-vivid clot.
Some, diving merrily, downward drove, and gleam’d
With arm and fin; the argent bubbles stream’d
Airwards, disturb’d; and the scarce troubled sea
Gurgled, where they had sunk, melodiously.
Others with fingers white would comb among
The drenchèd hair of slabby weeds that swung
Swimming, and languish’d green upon the deep
Down that dank rock o’er which their lush long tresses weep.
But most in a half-circle watch’d the sun;
And a sweet sadness dwelt on everyone;
I knew not why, – but know that sadness dwells
On Mermaids – whether that they ring the knells
Of seamen whelm’d in chasms of the mid-main,
As poets sing; or that it is a pain
To know the dusk depths of the ponderous sea,
The miles profound of solid green, and be
With loath’d cold fishes, far from man – or what; –
I know the sadness but the cause know not.
Then they, thus ranged, ‘gan make full plaintively
A piteous Siren sweetness on the sea,
Withouten instrument, or conch, or bell,
Or stretch’d cords tunable on turtle’s shell;
Only with utterance of sweet breath they sung
An antique chaunt and in an unknown tongue.
Now melting upward through the sloping scale
Swell’d the sweet strain to a melodious wail;
Now ringing clarion-clear to whence it rose
Slumber’d at last in one sweet, deep, heart-breaking close.
But when the sun had lapsed to Ocean, lo
A stealthy wind crept round seeking to blow,
Linger’d, then raised the washing waves and drench’d
The floating blooms and with tide flowing quench’d
The rosy isles: so that I stole away
And gain’d thro’ growing dusk the stirless bay;
White loom’d my rock, the water gurgling o’er,
Whence oft I watch but see those Mermaids now no more.