The Nereids

I have in my room a watercolor

Bizarre, and by a painter with whom

There is a quarrel between rhyme and meter.

—Théophile Kniatowski

Upon the white foam that makes a fringe

Unto the glaucous cloak of the sea

Is gathered together a bouquet strange—

Three nymphs, flowers of the bitter deep.

Like lilies drowned, the very swell

In its silver volute makes

Dance each lovely body it rolls,

It raises up, it undertakes.

Upon their blonde heads, all arrayed

With scallops and with water-reeds,

They combine, coquettish fays,

The jewel-box and the flora of seas.

Emptying its pearl, the oyster

Spangles with its treasure white

Their throats, by the curling breaker

With yet other pearls bedight.

And, even to their hips upraised

By Tritons’ arms filled with vigor

They gleam, by the azure laved,

Beneath their green and golden hair.

Under the blue water their pale

Flesh freezes, with a viscous twitch,

And the torso ends in a tail,

Half a woman, half a fish.

But who at all looks at the fin

And the loins with scaly folds,

Taking busts of ivory in,

Polished by the kiss of oceans?

On the horizon—piquant blend

Of fable and reality—

Appears a vessel that upends

The appalled choir of the sea.

Its flag is in three colors brave,

Its stack emits a vomit of steam;

Its wheelblades lash the sounding wave

And the nymphs dive fearfully.

Boldly they had followed in troops

The Archipelago’s triremes,

And the dolphins, arching their croups,

Awaited sad Arion’s screams.

But the steamboat with its wheels,

Like Vulcan beating Venus fair,

Would slap upon their lovely cheeks

And bruise all their limbs so bare.

Goodbye, fresh mythology!

The steamer passes and, afar,

Spies upon the wave set free

Porpoises in somersault.

Théophile Gautier