Lorelei

Lorelei, 1887, Oil, Johann Koler

It is no night to drown in: 

A full moon, river lapsing 

Black beneath bland mirror-sheen, 

The blue water-mists dropping 

Scrim after scrim like fishnets 

Though fishermen are sleeping, 

The massive castle turrets 

Doubling themselves in a glass 

All stillness. Yet these shapes float 

Up toward me, troubling the face 

Of quiet. From the nadir 

They rise, their limbs ponderous 

With richness, hair heavier 

Than sculptured marble. They sing 

Of a world more full and clear 

Than can be. Sisters, your song 

Bears a burden too weighty 

For the whorled ear's listening 

Here, in a well-steered country, 

Under a balanced ruler. 

Deranging by harmony 

Beyond the mundane order, 

Your voices lay siege. You lodge 

On the pitched reefs of nightmare, 

Promising sure harborage; 

By day, descant from borders 

Of hebetude, from the ledge 

Also of high windows. Worse 

Even than your maddening 

Song, your silence. At the source 

Of your ice-hearted calling -- 

Drunkenness of the great depths. 

O river, I see drifting 

Deep in your flux of silver 

Those great goddesses of peace. 

Stone, stone, ferry me down there.

A Mermaid, J. W. Waterhouse, Oil on Canvas, 1900, Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK

~ Sylvia Plath