Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, INLAND SEA-SHELL, by ANNE SOUTHERNE TARDY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

INLAND SEA-SHELL, by                    
First Line: Flushed with the heat of endless homely chores
Last Line: The laborer to the feast his harvest yields.
Subject(s): Farm Life; Shells; Agriculture; Farmers; Conchology


Flushed with the heat of endless homely chores,
With shining eyes and long expectant gaze,
The farmer's wife looks through vine-latticed doors
To mark the noon-day sun, whereby her days
Are ordered. Lifting plumply rounded arms
She takes, from the high mantel-piece, a shell
With tints that rival her own rosy charms,
And blows a note that echoes through the dell.

Far to the woods and to the calm lagoon,
The glad sound shrills, and hungry men, with jest
And song, put by the hoe. The hour of noon
Has come, and the kind hour of rest.

A far cry from the pearly haunts of mermaid,
To this dry mantel of the farmer's wife:
But rose and opal tints are deep inlaid;
In pearl-shell depths the ocean comes to life,
As beauty calls across far fertile fields,
The laborer to the feast his harvest yields.





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