The sands lay heaved, as heaved by waves,

As fashion'd in a thousand graves:

And wrecks of storm blown here and there,

And dead men scatter'd everywhere;

And strangely clad they seem'd to be

Just as they sank in that old sea.

The mermaid with her splendid hair

Had clung about a wreck's beam there;

And sung her song of sweet despair,

The time she saw the seas withdrawn