Where waters are deep and the blue is like glass,
Where shadows of coral and great fishes pass,
The Little Sea Princess would sit by the shore,
And dream of the world she was born to explore.
She listened to tales of the trees and the sun,
And longed for the day her young life was begun.

At fifteen at last, she arose to the air,
The wind of the evening blew soft in her hair.
A ship sailed beside her, with music and light,
And there stood a Prince in the beautiful night.
A terrible storm tore the vessel apart,
But she saved the young Prince who had stolen her heart.

She carried his body right onto the sand,
And left him to wake on the shore of his land.
But he never knew who had rescued his breath,
And left her to pine in a sorrow like death.
“I long for a soul that will live past the grave,
To walk like a human, and not as a wave.”

[…]

She swam to the depths where the whirlpools would boil,
Where toadstools and serpents would tangle and coil.
The Sea Witch arose with a grin on her face:
“I’ll give you two legs of a beautiful grace.
But every small step that you take on the floor
Will feel like a blade cutting deep to the core.

And if the young Prince takes another as wife,
The morning that follows will forfeit your life.
Your heart will be broken, your journey is done,
And you shall become but the foam in the sun.
The price for this magic is heavy and long:
I demand your sweet voice and your beautiful song.”

The knife cut her tongue, and the bargain was sealed,
The price for her dreaming too bitter to yield.
She drank of the potion upon the gray sand,
And awoke in her pain in the Prince’s own land.
He found her there helpless, a beautiful prize,
Who spoke with the sorrow of beautiful eyes.

[…]

He dressed her in silk and he called her his child,
And smiled as she danced, though her footsteps were wild.
With every light step on the marble and stone,
She suffered a torment entirely alone.
She loved him in silence, she watched as he slept,
And over his feet in the dark night she wept.

But rumors arrived of a king’s holy daughter,
A bride who was coming across the gray water.
The Prince saw her face and he cried with delight:
“The girl of the temple who saved me that night!”
He knew not the Mermaid was standing close by,
With a fracturing heart and a tear in her eye.

The wedding was held on the deck of the ship,
With wine on the tongue and a smile on the lip.
The Little Sea Princess was dressed in her gold,
Well knowing the morning would leave her quite cold.
She waited for dawn on the edge of the bow,
With nothing but death to look forward to now.

[…]

Her sisters arose from the waves of the deep,
With hair that was cut while the world was asleep.
“Take this!” they all cried, and they gave her a knife,
“Go strike at his heart to recover your life!
Before the first ray of the sun hits the sky,
The Prince must be slain, or the sister must die.”

She stepped to the tent where the newlyweds lay,
And looked on his face in the dawning of gray.
She whispered his name, but she flung the sharp blade
Deep into the waves where the foam-monsters played.
She threw herself down from the ship’s heavy side,
And melted away in the cold, rolling tide.

But she did not die into nothingness there,
For daughters of air caught her up in the care.
“Your love was so great, and your spirit so true,
A soul everlasting is granted to you.
By doing good deeds for three hundred long years,
You’ll rise to the heavens, washed clean of your tears.”