"The Little Wave Maidens"

The Little Wave Maidens

The little waves came stepping

        And courtesying up the sand,

Like bashful maidens holding

        Each other by the hand.

They wore deep azure dresses,

        And ribbons in their curls,

And every neck was circled

        With tiny, precious pearls.

All day they played and chattered,

        With laughter sweet and low;

But when the sunset beckoned, 

        They all made haste to go.

“Now fare-thee-well, we’re going,”

        They sweetly called to me,

And hand in hand went singing

        Back to the purple sea.

But all across the acres

        Of tidelands brown and bare,

They dropped the pale blue ribbons

        Out of their wind-blown hair.

"The Little Wave Maidens" as it appears in Ella Higginson's The Voice of April-Land (1903).

A draft of "The Little Wave Maidens" on onionskin paper, courtesy of the Ella Higginson Papers, Center for Pacific Northwest Studies, Heritage Resources, Western Washington University, Bellingham WA.