Tough Dames & Femme Fatales

ART & LITERATURE 

“Blow on, ye death fraught whirlwinds! blow,

Around the rocks, and rifted caves;

Ye demons of the gulf below!

I hear you, in the troubled waves.

High on this cliff, which darkness shrouds

In night's impenetrable clouds,

My solitary watch I keep,

And listen, while the turbid deep

Groans to the raging tempests, as they roll

Their desolating force, to thunder at the pole.

Eternal world of waters, hail!

Within thy caves my Lover lies;

And day and night alike shall fail

Ere slumber lock my streaming eyes.

Along this wild untrodden coast,

Heap'd by the gelid' hand of frost;

Thro' this unbounded waste of seas,

Where never sigh'd the vernal breeze;

Mine was the choice, in this terrific form,

To brave the icy surge, to shiver in the storm.

Yes! I am chang'd - My heart, my soul,

Retain no more their former glow.

Hence, ere the black'ning tempests roll,

I watch the bark, in murmurs low,

(While darker low'rs the thick'ning' gloom)

To lure the sailor to his doom;

Soft from some pile of frozen snow

I pour the syren-song of woe;

Like the sad mariner's expiring cry,

As, faint and worn with toil, he lays him down to die.

Then, while the dark and angry deep

Hangs his huge billows high in air ;

And the wild wind with awful sweep,

Howls in each fitful swell - beware!

Firm on the rent and crashing mast,

I lend new fury to the blast;

I mark each hardy cheek grow pale,

And the proud sons of courage fail;

Till the torn vessel drinks the surging waves,

Yawns the disparted main, and opes its shelving graves.

When Vengeance bears along the wave

The spell, which heav'n and earth appals;

Alone, by night, in darksome cave,

On me the gifted wizard calls.

Above the ocean's boiling flood

Thro' vapour glares the moon in blood:

Low sounds along the waters die,

And shrieks of anguish fill the' sky;

Convulsive powers the solid rocks divide,

While, o'er the heaving surge, the embodied spirits glide.

Thrice welcome to my weary sight,

Avenging ministers of Wrath!

Ye heard, amid the realms of night,

The spell that wakes the sleep of death.

Where Hecla's flames the snows dissolve,

Or storms, the polar skies involve;

Where, o'er the tempest-beaten wreck,

The raging winds and billows break;

On the sad earth, and in the stormy sea,

All, all shall shudd'ring own your potent agency.

To aid your toils, to scatter death,

Swift, as the sheeted lightning's force,

When the keen north-wind's freezing breath

Spreads desolation in its course,

My soul within this icy sea,

Fulfils her fearful destiny.

Thro' Time's long ages I shall wait

To lead the victims to their fate;

With callous heart, to hidden rocks decoy,

And lure, in seraph-strains, unpitying, to destroy.”

(Anne Bannerman, Mermaid) 

Art by Brian M. Viveros