But mermen didn't seem to care "A pair of legs with well-cut knees, Are far more eloquent, it's clear And Cleggs -a worthy, kind old boy- And when the day was dry, Because it pleased the lookers-on, He sat from morn till night-though con- At first the mermen laughed, "Pooh! pooh!" And sounded loud recalls; But vainly. So these fishy males "Our Monarch sends to Captain Cleggs "We've pleasant homes below the sea A judge of mermaids, he will find Good Capel sent a kind reply, To study all their ways and laws — The merman sank the captain too Jumped overboard, and dropped from view Like stone from catapult; And when he reached the merman's lair, He certainly was welcomed there, But ah! with what result! (Spoken by SELENE, a Fairy Queen.) WITH all their misery, with all their sin, With all the elements of wretchedness That teem on that unholy world of theirs, They have one great and ever-glorious gift, That compensation for all they have to bearThe gift of Love! Not as we use the word; To signify more tranquil brotherhood; But in some sense that is unknown to us, Their love bears like relation to our own That the fierce beauty of the noonday sun, Bears to the calm of a soft summer's eve. It nerves the wearied mortal with hot life, And bathes his soul in hazy happiness. The richest man is poor who hath it not, And he who hath it laughs at poverty. It hath no conqueror. Has worked his very worst, this love of theirs Lives still upon the loved one's memory. It is a strange enchantment, which invests The most unlovely things with loveliness. The maiden, fascinated by this spell, Sees everything as she would have it be; Her squalid cot becomes a princely home; Its stunted shrubs are groves of stately elms; The weedy brook that trickles past her door Is a broad river, fringed with drooping trees; When Death himself I hear you asking, Why- No airy fairy she, As she hangs in arsenic green, In a highly impossible scene And stately dames that bring Their daughters there to see, Pronounce the "dancing thing" No better than she should be With her skirt at her shameful knee And her painted, tainted phiz: Ah, matron, which of us is? (And, in sooth, it oft occurs That while these matrons sigh, And they use their glasses too, But change her gold and green For a coarse merino gown, And see her upon the scene Of her home, when coaxing down Her drunken father's frown, In his squalid cheerless den; She's a fairy truly, then! |