The Witch-Maid, and Other Verses/Bathing Rhyme
BATHING RHYME
Turquoise-green the laughing sea
And the beach is ivory,
Creamy-yellow, creamy-smooth—
How the small waves lisp and soothe!
Those grave woods will not betray,
All the shore is ours to-day,
There's no soul for many a mile
And the curved waves call and smile,
Coax and whisper and beguile . . .
Quick, your garments cast aside
Go to meet the rising tide!
Childlike run we hand in hand
Down the slope of hard smooth sand,
From the kissing sun's embrace
To the kissing waves that race
Frothing rainbows round our feet—
O the cool shock sharp and sweet!
O the healing of the sea,
Clearer than it seemed to be!
Even clearer—lucent green
Like the eyes of some sea queen.
Looking through the water's shimmer
Can you see a moving glimmer
Whiter than the rippled sand,
White as snow—a beckoning hand?
Dive, and lo! it swings from sight,
Vanishing in broken light.
She is gone, but memories stay
And transfigure all the day;
In the waves' soft touch there lingers
Something of her cool white fingers;
Is that shell her gleaming throat,
That dark weed, her hair afloat? . . .
So her troubling beauty's power
Like the perfume of a flower
Penetrates the sea and air
Making everything more fair:
Pleasure stabbing to the brain
With the joy that touches pain.
Of the water's strength made free,
We're a part of all the sea
Close its clean caress enfolds,
And each joy that motion holds
Taste we—glad to be alive—
Race the curling waves, or dive
To green dusk, and meet the day
Swift before has passed away
All our crystal pathway thick
With the bubbles rising quick;
Or when that is done we lie
Rocking, gazing at the sky,
Blue and sweet and purely lit
That we gasp to look on it....
Looking through the sunshot deep,
Where our sea-maid lies asleep,
Throat upflung, as white as lime,
With the clear waves keeping time
To the heaving of her breast—
Here we see to veil her rest
Every jewel-tint of green:
Jade, smaragdus, tourmaline,
Beryl and green sapphire's light,
Streaky solid malachite,
Chrysoprase and peacock-sheen
Of the opal's shifting green—
Patched and barred with purple dye
Where the rocks like watch-dogs lie,
Waiting crouched beneath the wave,
Hungry, cruel as the grave. . . .
Colour floods our souls until
They must brim and overspill,
Cups too small to bear away
Half the beauty of the day.
But when walking bound with heat
Shackled in the airless street,
When the sky has lost its light
And o'er all the dust is white—
We shall turn to dreams of this
As a damned soul thinks of bliss,
And the loveliness we fail
Now to grasp shall count full tale.