Battle-Scene From the Comic Operatic Fantasy the Seafarer

It beguiles—

This little Odyssey

In pink and lavender

Over a surface of gently-

Graded turquoise tiles

That represent a sea

With chequered waves and gaily

Bear up the seafarer,

Gaily, gaily,

In his pink plume and armor.

A lantern-frail

Gondola of paper

Ferries the fishpond Sindbad

Who poises his pastel spear

Toward three pinky-purple

Monsters which uprear

Off the ocean-floor

With fanged and dreadful head.

Beware, beware

The whale, the shark, the squid.

But fins and scales

Of each scrolled sea-beast

Troll no slime, no weed.

They are polished for the joust,

They gleam like easter eggshells,

Rose and amethyst.

Ahab, fulfill your boast:

Bring home each storied head.

One thrust, one thrust,

One thrust: and they are sped.

So fables go.

And so all children sing

Their bathtub battles deep,

Hazardous and long,

But oh, sage grownups know

Sea-dragon for sofa, fang

For pasteboard, and siren-song

For fever in a sleep.

Laughing, laughing

Of graybeards wakes us up.