Frolic of the Water Spirits

A song of the moonlight sea!
    A varied song to tell,
What sings in the murmurous deep to me,
    In the hum of a wreathed shell;
What leaps in the flashing waters glee,
    At their Queen’s delightful spell.

The giants who torment the waves,
    Scourger of the seas; Eroclydon;
Notus the stormy, and he who raves,
    From the cold Septentrion,
All sleep in their gloomy caves,
    Their white-tipped anger gone!
But they who bend the ripple’s bow,
    The little nimble sprites who blow
The spiral horns of the Protean crew,
        Are out of the glow
        Of the moon at her noon,
    And Nereids rocking and swinging below
On ruffled ribbons of amber hue,
Hiding in flosses of purple mosses,
    Almost too subtle for mortal view;
Their bubbles blow, and upward throw,
    Laughing and tossing them to and fro,
        Wild with delight
To see young Zephyr pursuing their flight,
    More fleetly the fleeter they go.

The half-moon that is in the sky,
    Is calm and tender as moon may be,
Like a dreamy lover’s half-shut eye
    That sees what open eyes never see;
The other half lies close to me,
    In a pool of the rocks, not peacefully,
For the water spirits are tossing it
    From hand to hand in a merry fit
Of their most fantastic glee!
    The stars in their infinite deep
Serenely burn, and keep
    The eternal Sabbath of the sky;
But the shivering starlets, quivering
    In the waters, by the spirits toss’d frantically fly,
Like sparkles from a forge-fire when whirlwinds go by!

        Little the water-sprites care
        For the beings of upper air;
        In their dancings
        And prancings,
        Their wreathings
        And bathings,
The moon and the stars are but beautiful playthings,
Crushed into luminous dust by the gay things!
    Glittering, twittering, tittering,
        Now in the air and now in the water,
And now far under, gone down like an otter,
    I see them, I hear them,
My rock-bed is near them,
    Graceful and undulent nothing can peer them.

The nymphs afloat in a pearly boat,
    Just break the wave with a bubbling note;
Over their bosoms the sea’s slip, thin,
    White, and round, from the life within,
With a motion that mocks
    All grace of action however rare,
    From their shelly beds they lift their heads
And shake aloft their dripping locks,
    The wealth of their jeweled hair.
Tossing their white arms up
    They leap like a flash in the gladdened air,
Hurry and flutter a moment there,
    Then down so lightly they drop,
The little foot-print makes hardly a dint,
    On the flexile waters! and off they fly
        Shouting till the shores reply,
        Flinging the spray
        Up, out, and away,
Which again they catch in a pearly cup
    And toss at each other in play.

Sometimes up the sandy beach
    Of a long and level reach