The Forsaken Merman
Come away, come away.Children dear, was it yesterday
We heard the sweet bells over the bay?
In the caverns where we lay,
Through the surf and through the swell,
The far-off sound of a silver bell?
Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep,
Where the winds are all asleep;
Where the spent lights quiver and gleam;
Where the salt weed sways in the stream;
Where the sea-beasts, ranged all round,
Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground;
Where the sea-snakes coil and twine,
Dry their mail, and bask in the brine;
Where great whales come sailing by,
Sail and sail, with unshut eye,
Round the world for ever and aye?
When did music come this way?
Children dear, was it yesterday?
Can you hear the mermaids singing? We’ve all heard the myth of how they lead men to their doom. Their songs lure ships onto the rocks and down to a watery grave.
Yet Arnold’s “Forsaken Merman” reverses this story. In this extract, the merman begs his children to “come away” from the surface and come down to the bottom of the ocean. The children have been looking for their human mother, Margaret, who had dwelt with them all in “the heart of the sea.”
They dwelt with them until “yesterday” that is—until she heard a far-off “silver bell.” The sound of its ringing had infiltrated through the “surf” and through the “swell,” full five fathoms. The pervasive sibilance of the lines makes us hear the sighing waves.
Down and down we seem to go, down into the strangest splendor, down into the deepest recesses of our imagination. Arnold paints a marvelous scene, full of sharp details that leap into life before our minds’ eyes.
We seem to see the “spent lights” softly glowing and fading into darkness, smell the “salt weed” and feel the “ooze” that surrounds the “sea-snakes” coiling and twining. Slowly and silently “great whales come sailing by,” with eyes forever open. They sail “for ever and aye”—in a peculiar eternity that only they know.
As we hear and picture this panorama, we seem to be completely enclosed in the “sand-strewn caverns” 20,000 leagues under the sea—and yet this world has been invaded by the “music” of the bell.
In the complete poem, it becomes clear that the bell belongs to a “little grey church” on the hillside, which appears to represent a reality more grim and crabbed than the merman’s. But it is “Easter-time in the world” and Margaret confesses that she feels she will lose her “soul” by staying under the waves. She longs to pray in the church. Her husband lets her go—and she never returns.
Rising to the surface, he walks to the church with his children and they see Margaret through the “small leaded panes,” but her eyes are riveted to the “holy book.” The door is shut and they cannot enter. They dive back down to mourn her absence.
The mood of the poem is dreamy, magical, sweet, and painfully sad. It has the power to draw stinging tears. Grief ebbs and flows and rises through every liquid line, and yet the poem remains hauntingly beautiful.
“The Forsaken Merman” has proved remarkably durable. For more than a century it has been touching and even transforming people’s lives. It gave Sylvia Plath, for instance, her first ever thrill of poetry. Her memory of this moment says more about the value of literature than any critical analysis:
“I saw gooseflesh on my skin. I did not know what had made it. I was not cold. Had a ghost passed over? No, it was the poetry. A spark flew off Arnold and shook me, like a chill. I wanted to cry; I felt very odd. I had fallen into a new way of being happy.”
Joan Didion writes in her memoir The Year of Magical Thinking that reading the poem helped her in the aftermath of her husband’s death. In a lighter vein, it has also recently influenced Liz Kessler in her popular children’s series featuring Emily Windsnap, a teenage girl who is really a mermaid.
The poem speaks to us of the conflict between the heart and the soul. Does Margaret leave the watery kingdom to find salvation, or does she betray her true feelings and find nothing more than a living death? Arnold reminds us that in life there are always points of cruel decision, of betrayal, and of loss—but through it all remains the beauty and sorrow of love.
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) was an English poet and cultural critic.
Christopher Nield is a poet living in London.
