The Sea Singer / Alfred Perceval Graves

The Sea Singer  (1913)  by Alfred Perceval Graves

from Poetry, August 1913

The Sea Singer

The Siren, by Edward John Poynter (1836-1919), circa 1864. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

The heaven was star-strewn
Above the new moon;
  Before a faint breeze we were floating;
When out of the distance, still clearer and clearer
And nearer and nearer there sighed
            And there cried
A strange, lonesome song o’er the tide.
 
We stood still and grave
To watch a far wave,
   That gathered and gathered toward us;
Till laughing aboard us there leaped from the billow
With locks long and yellow — a Maid —
            The Sea Maid,
Whose song on our heart-strings had played.
 
Sweet pain, pleasure sharp,
She poured from her harp;
   Around her we listened in wonder,
The wave warbled under, the stars in heaven’s hollow
They all seemed to follow her song,
            Her lone song,
As idly we fleeted along.
 
To leave us she turned;
Then rashly we burned
   To keep her bright beauty before us.
But when to enring her we strove, the Sea Singer
She wove her white finger around
            And around,
And left us all standing spell-bound.

This poem is in the public domain