A SEA SHELL

You speak to me

Of the long plunge and welter of the sea;

Likewise you are

Oracular

Of its low melody.

You voice its laughing moods,

Its lyric interludes,

Its secrecies, its sorceries, its mysteries,

Its tragic histories.

Aye, all that it has breathed, may breathe, shall breathe,

You unto me bequeath;

Thus am I made the fair inheritor

Of that rare essence of true harmony

Which many a land-girt exile hungers for,—

The sea!