Undula

I am the Nereid who rides on the ripples,
Queen of the merry, invisible peoples,
    Whose jollity crimples the water in rimples,
    As baby his baby-face laughs into dimples.
        Twittering, tittering,
Over the pebbles and under the moss,
    All my sea-fairies in frolic vagaries
Leap to the landward, and spray-bubbles toss.

Wings iridescent in luminous laving, —
(Zephyr is born of their rhythmical waving,)
    Floatingly waft us, attuned to our laughters,
    Driving the ripples that glitter abaft us;
        Glimmering, shimmering.
Flitters of glory betray our advance;
    Gold in the noonlight, silver in moonlight,
These are our sandals that flash in the dance!

Down to the caverns of silence and wonder
Glide we from billows that break into thunder,
    While the reef-whitening, a phosphorous lightning,
    Shoots as if Dawn over Midnight were brightening.
        Shivering, quivering,
Even the granite confesses the shock!
    But deep in the quiet we laugh at the riot,
And braid the red mosses that bloom on the rock.

Then we return with the sun from his exile,
Tripping and dinting the water-paths flexible;
    Where the wild clamor has left but a tremor
    All the sea-purples dance after my streamer;
        Flashingly, plashingly,
Glad to my welcome the bright waters leap;
    Wide is their humming: “All hail to thy coming, 
Queen of the Nereids that wrinkle the deep!”

Hid by the ripples, the sunlight, the breezes,
None but the eye of the innermost sees us:
    Yet half we discover, to poet and lover,
    Our shapes, by the graces, that tell where we hover!
    Rollicking, frolicking,
Ever we scatter new life as we go;
    Our cool, dewy kisses, new vigor, new blisses,
Alike on the weary and merry bestow.