A Sea Spell (by Dante Gabriel Rossetti) Canvas Print

This design features a painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882). It shows a mythological a siren in human form playing an instrument to lure sailors. The siren is an elegant and beautiful woman with long flowing red hair. She is wearing pink roses and she is surrounded by apples, apple blossoms and a bird, which is a seagull. The instrument being played has been described as a harp, but scholars have determined that it is a Japanese koto, a traditional 13-stringed zither-like instrument. The original painting was completed in 1877, and it is currently on display in the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote the following poem in sonnet form to accompany the painting: "Her lute hangs shadowed in the apple-tree, / While flashing fingers weave the sweet-strung spell / Between its chords; and as the wild notes swell, / The sea-bird for those branches leaves the sea. / But to what sound her listening ear stoops she? / What netherworld gulf-whispers doth she hear, / In answering echoes from what planisphere, / Along the wind, along the estuary? / She sinks into her spell: and when full soon / Her lips move and she soars into her song, / What creatures of the midmost main shall throng / In furrowed surf-clouds to the summoning rune: / Till he, the fated mariner, hears her cry, / And up her rock, bare-breasted, comes to die?"