Endlessly round and round,

Waiting for the faces, the faces from the darkness,

The dreadful rising faces of the drowned.

"It was nothing but a dream," said the Empress.

"I thought I was walking on the sea;

And the foam rushed up in a wild smother,

And a crowd of little faces looked at me.

They were drowning! They were drowning," said the Empress,

"And they stretched their feeble arms to the sky;

But the worst was—they mistook me for their mother,