I am continuing the verse of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who I mentioned the other day was both an artist and a poet.
Well, to illustrate that, I am posting today his painting "Sea-Spell" together with the poem of the same name that he wrote to accompany it. Or was it the other way around?
A SEA-SPELL
Her lute hangs shadowed in the apple-tree,
While flashing fingers weave the sweet-strung spell
Between its chords; and as the wild notes swell,
The sea-bird for those branches leaves the sea.
But to what sound her listening ear stoops she?
What netherworld gulf-whispers doth she hear,
In answering echoes from what planisphere,
Along the wind, along the estuary?
She sinks into her spell: and when full soon
Her lips move and she soars into her song,
What creatures of the midmost main shall throng
In furrowed self-clouds to the summoning rune,
Till he, the fated mariner, hears her cry,
And up her rock, bare breasted, comes to die?
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
The lady was obviously a 'Siren'.
For more turn to my art blog:
jollyweez
"You will come first of all to the Sirens, who are enchanters of all mankind and whoever comes their way; and that man who unsuspecting approaches them, and listens to the Sirens singing, has no prospect of coming home and delighting his wife and little children as they stand about him in greeting, but the Sirens by the melody of their singing enchant him.
They sit in their meadow, but the beach before it is piled with boneheaps of men now rotted away, and the skins shrivel upon them
You must drive straight on past, but melt down sweet wax of honey and with it stop your companions' ears, so none can listen;
the rest, that is, but if you yourself are wanting to hear them, then have them tie you hand and foot on the fast ship, standing upright against the mast with the ropes' ends lashed around it so that you can have joy in hearing the song of the Sirens; but if you supplicate your men and implore them to set you free, then they must tie you fast with even more lashings.
The Odyssey of Homer