Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE SEA-SHELL, by EDWIN JOHN PRATT Poet's Biography First Line: Thou silver shell that liest near Last Line: Of days with gray is overcast. Alternate Author Name(s): Pratt, E. J. Subject(s): Art & Artists; Memory; Sculpture & Sculptors | ||||||||
THOU silver shell that liest near The pebbled margin of the sea, Bidding sunbeams reappear In opal-cinctured tracery! What wondrous artist wove those lines Of ivory flamed with green and gold, And bordered thee with blue designs Of Heaven's pencil, fold on fold? Whence came that myriad-voiced stream Within those coral veinsthat flow Of murmurous melody whose theme Swings round a rapture, and a woe? They tell us that the Ocean's birth Is anthemed in thy hidden strings, That every choral song of Earth Still to thy sculptured gateway clings; That from thy sweet-tongued numbers rise The herald notes of distant stars, Awaking slumberladen skies Across the Morn's soft opening bars; That centuried thunders darkly dwell Somewhere within thy curled retreat, Lulled by yon sapphire-bosomed swell That steals to shore on zephyred feet. But list! What notes are these that fall In broken music wildly strange, Like Autumn answering Winter's call To seared embrace, that soon must change Her mellowed hours to barren days, To shadowed union with the tomb, And close her harvest songs of praise With threnodies of blighted bloom? Do these reflect thy mother's moods, Pearled miniature of troubled years! Her sombre-suited solitudes, Her cadences of wailful fears? Or, is it thus alas! too true, Thou tellest to the listening ear Its own sad stories, old and new, Its coming sorrows, distant, near? If so thou singest, then how soon, Frail warden of Life's chambered past, Seer of its yet-to-bemy Noon Of days with gray is overcast. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...AT THE MUSEE RODIN IN PARIS by LAURE-ANNE BOSSELAAR THE PARALLAX MONOGRAPH FOR RODIN by NORMAN DUBIE THE SAINTS OF NEGATIVITY; FOR ERMA POUNDS by NORMAN DUBIE A ROGERS GROUP by ROBERT FROST ON A HORSE CARVED IN WOOD by DONALD HALL JADE MOTHER GODDESS by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA IN GALLERIES by RANDALL JARRELL |
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