One half on the sand, and half in the sea,
  But his hair began to stiffen;
For when he looked where her feet should be,
  She had no more feet than Miss Biffen!

But a scaly tail, of a dolphin’s growth,
  In the dabbling brine did soak: 
At last she opened her pearly mouth,
  Like an oyster, and thus she spoke: 

“You crimpt my father, who was a skate,—­
  And my sister you sold—­a maid;
So here remain for a fish’ry fate,
  For lost you are, and betrayed!”

And away she went, with a sea-gull’s scream,
  And a splash of her saucy tail;
In a moment he lost the silvery gleam
  That shone on her splended mail!

The sun went down with a blood-red flame,
  And the sky grew cloudy and black,
And the tumbling billows like leap-frog came,
  Each over the other’s back!

Ah me! it had been a beautiful scene,
  With the safe terra-firma round;
But the green water-hillocks all seem’d to him
  Like those in a churchyard ground;

And Christians love in the turf to lie,
  Not in watery graves to be;
Nay, the very fishes will sooner die
  On the land than in the sea.

And whilst he stood, the watery strife
  Encroached on every hand,
And the ground decreased,—­his moments of life
  Seemed measured, like Time’s, by sand;

And still the waters foamed in, like ale,
  In front, and on either flank,
He knew that Goodwin and Co. must fail,
  There was such a run on the bank.

A little more, and a little more,
  The surges came tumbling in,
He sang the evening hymn twice o’er,
  And thought of every sin!

Each flounder and plaice lay cold at his heart,
  As cold as his marble slab;
And he thought he felt, in every part,
  The pincers of scalded crab.

The squealing lobsters that he had boiled,
  And the little potted shrimps,
All the horny prawns he had ever spoiled,
  Gnawed into his soul, like imps!

And the billows were wandering to and fro,
  And the glorious sun was sunk,
And Day, getting black in the face, as though
  Of the nightshade she had drunk!

Had there been but a smuggler’s cargo adrift,
  One tub, or keg, to be seen,
It might have given his spirits a lift
  Or an anker where Hope might lean!

But there was not a box or a beam afloat,
  To raft him from that sad place;
Not a skiff, not a yawl, or a mackerel boat,
  Nor a smack upon Neptune’s face.

At last, his lingering hopes to buoy,
  He saw a sail and a mast,
And called “Ahoy!”—­but it was not a hoy,
  And so the vessel went past.

And with saucy wing that flapped in his face,
  The wild bird about him flew,
With a shrilly scream, that twitted his case,
  “Why, thou art a sea-gull too!”

And lo! the tide was over his feet;
  Oh! his heart began to freeze,
And slowly to pulse:—­in another beat
  The wave was up to his knees!