Song to the Siren

Long afloat on shipless oceans
I did all my best to smile
'Til your singing eyes and fingers
Drew me loving to your isle
And you sang
Sail to me
Sail to me
Let me enfold you
Here I am
Here I am
Waiting to hold you

Did I dream you dreamed about me?
Were you hare when I was fox?
Now my foolish boat is leaning
Broken lovelorn on your rocks,
For you sing, Touch me not, touch me not, come back tomorrow:
O my heart, O my heart shies from the sorrow

I am puzzled as the newborn child

I am troubled at the tide:
Should I stand amid the breakers?
Should I lie with Death my bride?
Hear me sing, "Swim to me, Swim to me, Let me enfold you:
Here I am, Here I am, Waiting to hold you."

There are some interesting ideas surrounding the sirens. They were either half-bird or mermaids whose irresistible singing lured sailors to their deaths. Why they lured sailors to their deaths is unclear. One thought is that the sirens didn't intend for the sailors to die; it's just that the siren song was so irresistible that sailors who heard it would languish away from starvation because they would refuse to leave. To my mind, even beyond the sailors' slow deaths there's something kind of tragic about that idea. The siren means no harm. She is only following her nature in singing so beautifully; to do to otherwise would be to die to her nature. The siren is compelled to sing and helpless over its effects. Her gift of song is a curse, of sorts--especially if she should fall in love with a sailor.

One of my very favorite things about this song is the unexpected inversion of roles. The singer of the song is the sailor, not the siren--a song "to" the siren, not "of" her. The sailor is singing to the siren of his desire to join with her, but for some reason her "heart shies from the sorrow." What sorrow? It's as if she loves the sailor and fears his inevitable death if he remains entranced by her song, so she is sending him away now. There's another idea about sirens here that might relate, too: one version of the legend is that the sirens appealed to one's spirit by singing of prophetic truths -- full knowledge of the past, present, and future that would end in death because, with that knowledge, there was nothing left to live for (akin to eating the apple from the tree of knowledge and dying a death of the spirit, right?). So maybe the siren divines the sailor's death at her song and, loving him, wants to send him away to save him (and to save herself from sorrow), so she stops singing.

Or maybe the siren is crafty, after all, and only appears to be the innocent artist fallen in love with the sailor and sacrificing her song to save him. Maybe she's just a wily seductress who sang him into love with her and then withdrew her song, abandoning him to the pangs of unrequited love. Killing him softly with her song, as it were.