Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SEA LAVENDER, by LOUISE MOREY BOWMAN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SEA LAVENDER, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: My puritan grandmother! - I see her now
Last Line: In her dear treasures of sea shells and weed.
Subject(s): Beauty; Grandparents; Sea; Shells; Treasures; Weeds; Grandmothers; Grandfathers; Great Grandfathers; Great Grandmothers; Ocean; Conchology


My Puritan Grandmother!—I see her now,
With placid brow,
Always so sure
That no things but the right things shall endure!
Sombrely neat, so orderly and prim,
Always a little grim,
Austere but kind. ...
Smooth-banded hair and smoothly-banded mind.

But let me whisper it to you to-day—
I know it now—
That deep in her there was a flame at play.
Beneath that brow
The blue-grey eyes sought beauty, found it too
Most often by the ocean's passionate blue.
Her sea-beach treasures—shells and coloured weed
Gathered and hoarded with glad human greed—
They warm my heart to-day with insight new.
How vividly I see her, frail and old,
A tiny, black-clothed figure on the beach,
Compactly wrapped against the sea-wind's cold,
Patiently waiting till waves let her reach
Some sandy strip, where purple, amber, green,
Her lacy sea-weed treasures could be seen.
(She pressed and mounted them—frail tangled things!
Handled by her, fit to trim fairies' wings.)

So I recall her,
Searching salt-sea pools
For Beauty's shadow.
All her rigid rules,
And cold austereness with a storm-tossed child,
Melt into airs of evenings, warm and mild.
And I find revelation, sweet indeed,
In her dear treasures of sea shells and weed.





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