’Twill be Easter-time in the world—ah me!
And I lose my poor soul, Merman, here with thee.’
I said, ‘Go up, dear heart, through the waves,
Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves.’
She smil’d, she went up through the surf in the bay.
Children dear, was it yesterday?
Perhaps we should find the antecedents of this Merman’s lost Margaret, whom he called back in vain, in the Danish ballad of ‘The Merman and the Marstig’s Daughter,’ who, in Goethe’s version, sought the winsome May in church, thither riding as a gay knight on
horse of the water clear,
The saddle and bridle of sea-sand were.