Elegy on a Dead Mermaid Washed Ashore at Plymouth Rock

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 far away
 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 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.