The pearly maid

A poem about a mermaid.

Draped in pearls, she sings a song of death

She swims around the vessel

She smells the sailor’s breath!

She calls to him so delicately

Singing him to doom

He tries not to listen

But he sees her chest festooned

Pretty little pearls so white

Glistening in the sea

Around a neck of purity

Surely she cannot harm me?

He thinks so sure, he thinks he is wise

So takes off his clothes and swims

She catches him with ease and now the story gets grim

The sailor dies unwittingly beneath the rocky waves

The maiden he had got too near, has torn his airways

He swims with the little fishes, in his deathly state

He will be a warning to others, not to make the same mistakes…