He sings how she sits weeping
’Mid shells that round her lie.
“False Neckan shares my bed,” she weeps;
“No Christian mate have I.”
He sings how through the billows
He rose to earth again,
And sought a priest to sign the cross,
That Neckan heaven might gain.
He sings how, on an evening,
Beneath the birch-trees cool,
He sate and played his harp of gold,
Beside the river-pool.
Beside the pool sate Neckan,
Tears filled his mild blue eye.
On his white mule, across the bridge,
A cassocked priest rode by.
“Why sitt’st thou there, O Neckan,
And play’st thy harp of gold?
Sooner shall this my staff bear leaves,
Than thou shalt heaven behold.”
But, lo! the staff, it budded;
It greened, it branched, it waved.
“O ruth of God!” the priest cried out,
“This lost sea-creature saved!”
The cassocked priest rode onwards,
And vanished with his mule;
And Neckan in the twilight gray
Wept by the river-pool.
He wept, “The earth hath kindness,
The sea, the starry poles;
Earth, sea, and sky, and God above,—
But, ah! not human souls!”
In summer, on the headlands,
The Baltic Sea along,
Sits Neckan with his harp of gold,
And sings this plaintive song.