Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ELEGY ON A DEAD MERMAID WASHED ASHORE AT PLYMOUTH ROCK, by ROBERT SILLIMAN HILLYER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ELEGY ON A DEAD MERMAID WASHED ASHORE AT PLYMOUTH ROCK, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Pallidly sleeping, the ocean's mysterious daughter
Last Line: Only a fable like all of our strange and beautiful dreams.
Subject(s): Death; Mermaids & Mermen; Dead, The


Pallidly sleeping, the Ocean's mysterious daughter
Lies in the lee of the boulder that shattered her charms;
Dawn rushes over the level horizon of water
And touches to flickering crimson her face and her arms,
While every scale in that marvelous tail
Quivers with colour like sun on a Mediterranean sail.

Could you not keep to the ocean that lulls the Equator,
Soulless, immortal, and fatally fair to the gaze,
Or were you called to the North by an ecstasy greater
Than any you knew in those ancient and terrible days
When all your delight was to flash on the sight
Of the wondering sailor and lure him to death in the watery night?

Was there, perhaps, on the deck of some faraway vessel
A lad from New England whose fancy you failed to ensnare?
Who, born of this virtuous rock, and accustomed to wrestle
With beauty in all of its forms, became your despair,
And awoke in your breast a mortal unrest
That dragged you away from the South to your death in the cold Northwest?

Pallidly sleeping, your body is shorn of its magic,
But Death gives a soul to whatever is lovely and dies.
Now the Ocean reclaims you again, lest a marvel so tragic
Remain to be mocked by our earthly and virtuous eyes,
And reason redeems already what seems
Only a fable like all of our strange and beautiful dreams.





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