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. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: THE HILL by EDGAR LEE MASTERS SONNET: 36 by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE PROMETHEUS UNBOUND; A LYRICAL DRAMA IN FOUR ACTS by PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY BARCLAY OF URY by JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER STANZAS TO HELEN M-- M-- by BERNARD BARTON HOPE DEFERRED by LOUISA SARAH BEVINGTON IN VINCULIS; SONNETS WRITTEN IN AN IRISH PRISON: MITIGATIONS by WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT |