Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1624?–1674)

MY cabinets are oyster-shells,

In which I keep my Orient pearls:

And modest coral I do wear,

Which blushes when it touches air.

On silver waves I sit and sing,

And then the fish lie listening:

Then resting on a rocky stone

I comb my hair with fishes bone:

The whilst Apollo with his beams

Doth dry my hair from soaking streams,

His light doth glaze the water’s face,

And make the sea my looking glass.

So when I swim on waters high,

I see myself as I glide by,

But when the sun begins to burn,

I back into my waters turn,

And dive unto the bottom low:

Then on my head the waters flow

In curlèd waves and circles round,

And thus with eddies I am crowned.