Page:Poems that every child should know (ed. Burt, 1904).djvu/300

262 Where the sea-snakes coil and twine,

Dry their mail and bask in the brine;

Where great whales come sailing by,

Sail and sail, with unshut eye,

Round the world forever and aye?

When did music come this way?

Children dear, was it yesterday?

Children dear, was it yesterday

(Call yet once) that she went away?

Once she sate with you and me,

On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea,

And the youngest sate on her knee.

She comb'd its bright hair, and she tended it well,

When down swung the sound of a far-off bell.

She sigh'd, she look'd up through the clear green sea;

She said: "I must go, for my kinsfolk pray

In the little gray church on the shore to-day.

'Twill be Easter-time in the world—ah me!

And I lose my poor soul, Merman! here with thee."

I said: "Go up, dear heart, through the waves;

Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves!"

She smil'd, she went up through the surf in the bay.

Children dear, was it yesterday?

Children dear, were we long alone?

"The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan,

Long prayers," I said, "in the world they say,

Come!" I said; and we rose through the surf in the bay.