The Mermaid
A mermaid found a swimming lad,
Picked him for her own,
Pressed her body to his body,
Laughed; and plunging down
Forgot in cruel happiness
That even lovers drown.
William Butler Yeats
If you liked this Yeats Mermaid Poem you may also like My Poem The Sirens Call and my Rhyming Couplet Deadly Siren Song
You can also check out my SEA POETRY section with Sea Poems I wrote
You may also like William Butler Yeats and The Poetry of Fairies
Supernatural Hippie 
I’m glad it was just a poem.
And a very famous one too. 🙂
Such a sad poem. Finding true love, and then losing it…
The love between a Mermaid and a Mortal Man can rarely be a smooth one. The World at Sea and The World of Land are too different. It is hard to bridge that gulf.
Yes it is. Even do, miracles happen sometimes!
Oh of course yes. 🙂 There are Mermaid Love Stories. This poems different though.
☺
“Cruel happiness” indeed. Always the oxymoron in Yeats, isn’t it? From the “terrible beauty” of “Easter 1916” to the fractured moments of “Leda and the Swan” and “The Second Coming” — always oxymoron, collision, rupture. I like it 🙂