Weary Wee Flipperling

I've been slowly but surely making my way through Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book with Neeps, and the other night we finally finished up "The White Seal" (we're in "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" now, and it is such fun to read aloud!)  I had never actually read "The White Seal" before (although of course I loved the cartoon as a child) which strikes me as strange, because I had read some of the other stories, but who knows how these things happen.  At any rate, the best thing about reading "The White Seal" was the lovely little poem that Kipling prefaced it with:

Oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us

And black are the waters that sparkled so green.

The moon o'er the combers, looks downward to find us

At rest in the hollows that rustle between.

Where billow meets billow, there soft be thy pillow;

Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease!

The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee,

Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas.

I've started reading it each night in an attempt to commit it to memory, and Neeps definitely gets called "Weary Wee Flipperling" as a result (he also gets called "My Mowgli" because sometimes he is a little naked frog).  Tonight I started dreaming of ways to turn the poem into another piece of art for his walls, in no small part because my patronus is totally a seal:

Pen in moleskine, naturally

I've wanted to do another watercolor/ink/embroidery piece, and I believe this will be the one.  Now I just have to find the time...