Page:Weird Tales Volume 44 Number 7 (1952-11).djvu/77



LASHING through facets of her glassy world The many-chambered sea, cold mermaid rises, For a lean shadow now obliquely moves Across her rippled roof.

Up, up, up from her hollowed water-land, Up convoluted stairways of her restless house The mermaid mounts, shaking her dangerous hair, And see! she spreads before the vessel's bow Her gold-green locks and scarlet seaweed crown, Her pearly-pale half-body of a girl Cupped in its husk of opalescent scale.

Who flushes red, and leaps, and in her arms Sinks with a bubbled cry of fear and joy, But he the youngest of the gaping crew? O call in vain to your lost brother, fling the net. Tough powerless fishers straining desperate-eyed Against die dripping side! Then bid the women on the hungry shore Raise the wild keen and wring their empty hands?

Far out the mermaid, tired of her play, Lets her chill toy drift weathercock, supine, In hammocks of the swinging tides, while she Flicks a bright fin and darts to comb her curls Among rough water-rocks off Brittany. 75