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 Higginson’s The Voice of April-Land (1903).
A draft of “The Little Wave Maidens,” courtesy of the Ella Higginson Papers, Center for Pacific Northwest Studies, Heritage Resources, Western Washington University, Bellingham Washington.