As cygnet down, proud swelled her breast;
Her eye confest the pearly tear;
His hand she to her bosom prest—
"Is there no heart for rapture here?
"These limbs, sprung from the lucid sea,
"Does no warm blood their currents fill,
"No heart-pulse riot, wild and free,
"To joy, to love's delirious thrill?"
"Though all the splendour of the sea
"Around thy faultless beauty shine,
"That heart, that riots wild and free,
"Can hold no sympathy with mine.
"These sparkling eyes, so wild and gay,
"They swim not in the light of love:
"The beauteous maid of Colonsay,
"Her eyes are milder than the dove!
"Even now, within the lonely isle,
"Her eyes are dim with tears for me;
"And canst thou think that syren smile
"Can lure my soul to dwell with thee?"
An oozy film her limbs o'erspread;
Unfolds in length her scaly train;
She tossed, in proud disdain, her head,
And lashed, with webbed fin, the main.
"Dwell here, alone!" the mermaid cried,
"And view far off the sea-nymphs play;
"Thy prison-wall, the azure tide,
"Shall bar thy steps from Colonsay.
"Whene'er, like ocean's scaly brood,
"I cleave, with rapid fin, the wave,
"Far from the daughter of the flood,
"Conceal thee in this coral cave.
"I feel my former soul return;
"It kindles at thy cold disdain:
"And has a mortal dared to spurn
"A daughter of the foamy main?"
She fled; around the crystal cave
The rolling waves resume their road,
On the broad portal idly rave,
But enter not the nymph's abode.