THE SEA-MAID
I heard an immortal, under the sea,
Singing the beauty of change and death.
Oh lovelier than light was she,
And Araby was in her breath.
She lay in a hollow of stainless air
Roofed and walled with a crystal gleam;
No light wind stirred to quiver her hair
Or loose from her eyes the banded dream.
Her voice was the piping voice of a child,
Shrill, pathetic. I do not know
Whether I wept or whether I smiled
To hear her chant of curious woe.
The sea-maid sang,
“Never shall I die.
The evil eye,
The spine, the fang
Have not any power,—
No spell, no charm
May wither or harm
My beauty’s flower.
For, I suppose,
I am fair, more fair
Than any rose
Or earth-bloom rare,
Or maid of the earth,
Or, faint and far,
Heaven’s dark birth
Of a radiant star.
And yet they are crowned
With a joy not mine,
With a light divine
Who have found, have found
The secret of change,—
They are born, they grow,
They are dark, they glow,
They are new, wild, strange.
But I remain
Immortal, I
Who am fain, oh fain
To change or die.
Once was a time
I found the wreck
Of a ship sublime
With a masted deck:
I peeped through the hull
And what should it hold
But shimmering gold
And a shining skull
And broken glass
And twisted steel,
And a steering-wheel
Of oak and brass.
I loved them and watched them day by day,
I watched their beautiful slow decay.
I watched them soften and break and rust,
And thicken with weeds and fall to dust.
But when they were crumbled quite, there came
The fish that are centuries-through the same,
Their lifted lids that ought to be wise
Arching high over vacant eyes.
With gaping mouth and sloping chin,
And face fixed hard in a solemn grin,
They softly murmured, The passing hour
Over our beauty has no power.
I turned. I looked in my crystal glass.
My splendour was bright as ever it was.
And I wept, and I weep, that I should remain
Immortal, unchanging, without a stain.”