Classic Poem

The graceful green, in grenadine,
Danced well to Otus' flute.
And where his reed flung winged seed
Her furrows bore quick fruit:
For countless fish thrust through the sea,
Like silver grass in shoot.

And one strange fish among the hosts
Had large and human eyes.
And every night it came and basked
Beneath the velvet skies.
And every night it stayed its flight
Till Arcturus would rise.

Love binds with silk; and then with hemp;
And then with iron thong.
And Otus grew to love those eyes
And they to love his song.
And every eve his flute would grieve
Above the silver throng.

The perfumed night called from the height
That pierced her silver sails —
" An hundred maids, with amorous braids,
Dance now through Gramard's dales:
Why waste thy song on a motley throng
In slimy fins and scales?

" I'll stem thy wounded flow of heart
With wealth of woman's hair.
I'll light thy soul with woman's eyes;
And rid thee of despair. "
But Otus cried, " My only joys
Are those the fish may share.

" And there's a hand in Gramard's land
For every lonesome maid.
And there are flowers in Gramard's bowers
For every soul dismayed.
But never a flute, save mine, can lure
The tribes of the deep sea shade. "

Love binds with silk; and then with hemp;
And then with iron band.
And then comes Fate and, soon or late,
Unwinds each precious strand:
And then the hours that promised flowers
Bring only wastes of sand.

One evening Otus missed the eyes
That gazed with human fears:
Nor did they come the next, nor yet
Throughout the weary years.
And so he wandered, desolate,
Mid Gramard's dunes and meres.

And then at last a troubled voice
Assailed him in a dream —
" And did'st thou love the fins and scales,
Or what did human seem? "
And Otus answered, " I did love
A living soul, I deem. "

So touched to pity by the look
The tender minstrel bore,
The spirit cried, " The fish shall bide
To-morrow at thy door;
If thou but call from Gramard's wall,
Rismel, three times, no more. "

From Gramard's cliff did Otus cry
" Rismel, Rismel, Rismel. "
And after the word three times was heard,
An answer, low and dismal,
Moaned under the walls of sobbing halls,
In sea arcades abysmal.

And soon the mystic sea unrolled
Her heaving portals wide:
And near the shore, where oft of yore
The fish was wont to bide,
A mermaid, swaying a thousand stars,
Lay pillowed on the tide.

And then, as Otus roused his flute
With lilt of ancient tunes,
Her wistful eyes looked with surprise
On Gramard's furrowed dunes —
To her their glow did seem to flow
From old, familiar moons.

" Art thou the fish? " and Rismel said
" A mermaid was I born:
And yet I knew the sky was blue,
Ere Neptune's robe was torn:
And yet I knew the sky was blue,
And Gramard's dunes forlorn.

" When in the songless caves I lay
My soul yearned for a thing.
And what it yearned I only learned
An hour your flute did sing —
An hour your flute obeyed the mute,
White fingers of her king. "

Then Otus played with madder art
Than ever man did play;
And drew from caverns of his heart
An old and doleful lay;
And lit the dole of its grieving soul
On Dian's tapered way.

And Rismel rose from out the sea,
As ships lift in the gale:
So far she rose the gleaming sun
Revealed the fin and scale:
Which seen, once more, the sea's torn floor
She pierced, with hopeless wail.

Nine days and nights on Gramard's shores
Did Otus' spirit bleed.
Nine days his woe did sadly flow
Through caverns of his reed.
But for nine long days the secret sea
Bore only the wayward weed.

And then one night the silver light,
That flooded to the West,
Unbared, upon the tearful wave,
The mermaid's dead, cold breast:
Like drifted snow her flesh did show
Above the billows crest.

Her hair did hold a stifling fold
Of sea-wave in its lair.
And wide her eyes were to the skies —
Her life's last thought lay there —
(It was a thought that she had caught
From grottoes of despair.)

And Otus drew her to the sands,
And made her last, cold bed.
And the stars crept low in heaven, as though
They honored, too, the dead.
And the sun did surely weep all night;
For the lids of Dawn were red.