Mermaids and Poems!

For the last couple of weeks, I have been working on this painting for my friend, Meg. She requested a mermaid painting back in March, and I've just now gotten around to it. The mermaids are playing hide and seek, and I have a sneaking suspicion that one of those little fish is going to give the mermaid in the foreground away - I just know it. I may tweak a little more here and there, but I think its mostly finished... I think...

Anyway, in order to make it fit into this week's Illustration Friday, I found a poem to go along with it:

Mermaid

by Walter de la Mare

Leagues, leagues over the sea I sail
Couched on a wallowing dolphin's tail.

The sky is on fire, the waves a-sheen,
I dabble my foot in the billows green.

In a sea-weed hat on the rocks I sit,
where tern and sea-mew glide and beat,
and where dark shadows the cormorants meet.

In caverns cool when the tide's a wash,
I sound my conch to the watery splash.

From out their grottos at evenings beam,
the mermaids swim with locks agleam.

Happy Friday!