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HENRY KIRKE · 1869

Henry Kirke’s poem helped to popularise the myth of the Mermaid’s Pool and the place itself in Victorian Times.

There is a land within a northern clime
Where many a mountain reaches to the clouds,
That rest their billowy fleeces on its head.
And roll adown its rugged, storm-rent side.
At the foot of such a mountain in this land
There lies a pool, dark and mysterious,
Shadowed by blackened rocks, and sedges drear,
In which no reedy warbler builds its nest;
No heather nods its bells unmusical
Around its banks, no sombre-coated bee
Hums over it a busy melody;
No speckled trout or dark-backed umber there
Wake the still waters with the circling leaps;
No chattering grouse drops in the doubtful wave
Feathers that float like tiny argosies;
Nor furry-footed coney stops to drink
Its waters salt as those their watch that keep
Over the doomed towns of Palestine.

With solemn awe the lonely shepherd treads
Past the weird margin of the mountain tarn,
Fearing the sprite that dwells within its depths,
And rot, and ague, and a thousand ills
He thinks such fearsome folk are wont to give
To those that trespass on their sovereignty.

But one there was a sprightly lad and tall,
And gifted with a face in which for mastery
Action and thought seemed always combating,
Who always felt attracted to the pool,
And sat for many hours plumbing its depth
With anxious eyes; but nought saw he therein
Save the reflection of his comely face.
Warning he had full oft from wiser men
To meddle not in such a dangerous quest,
Nor seek for death where death was surely found:

For ’tis believed that on a certain eve
When summer fruits are ripe, and in the sky
The stars can scarcely light their shining lamps,
And the soft air is strangely musical
With the faint soft hum of fairy merriment,
A maiden, strangely fair, but strangely formed,
Rises from out the pool, and by her songs
And heavenly beauty lures to shameful death
The luckless wight who hears her melodies.

But youth is curious, and the shepherd lad
Longed with intense desire to see the maid.
He dreamt of her by night, her white arms seemed
To lock him in a clinging, fond embrace;
She haunted him by day as moodily
He watched beside the pool, and seemed to see
In each reflected cloud her drapery.

At last the night arrived, the sun just dipped
His rosy fingers in the pathless sea,
Leaving the world not dark, but hardly light;
The waning stars scarce marked the azure sky,
And zephyrs gentle cooled the heated earth:
’Twas just the hour when night and morning meet,
When, watching still, the boy sat eagerly,
On a huge stone that darkened all the pool;
When suddenly the wave gleamed fitfully
With sudden light, as in the tropic seas
The lambent waves shine with phosphoric glare,
And brighter grew the water, and the air
Was filled with music ravishingly sweet.

With open mouth and eager starting eyes
The youth stood gazing at these mysteries,
And saw from out the troubled waves arise
A maiden, clothed alone in loveliness;
Her golden hair fell o’er her shoulders white,
And curled in amorous ringlets round her breasts;
Her eyes were melting into love, her lips
Had made the very roses envious;
Withal a voice so full, and yet so clear,
So tender, made for loving dialogues.

And, then, she sang—sang of undying love
That waited them within her coral groves
Beneath the deep blue sea, and all the bliss
That mortals made immortal could enjoy,
Who lived with her in sweet community.
She sang, and stretching out her rounded arms,
She bade him leap and take her for his own—
With one wild cry he leapt, and with a splash
That roused the timid moorhen from her nest,
Sank ’neath the darkling wave for evermore.

First published in The Reliquary, 1869.