And then I pressed the shell
Close to my ear
And listened well,
And straightway like a bell
Came low and clear
The slow, sad murmur of far distant seas,
Whipped by an icy breeze
Upon a shore
Wind-swept and desolate.
It was a sunless strand that never bore
The footprint of a man,
Nor felt the weight
Since time began
Of any human quality or stir
Save what the dreary winds and waves incur.
And in the hush of waters was the sound
If I were on the High Road
That runs to Malvern Town,
I should not need to read, to smoke,
My fear of death to drown;
Watching the clouds, skies, shadows dappling
The sweet land up and down.
But here the shells rush over,
We lie in evil holes,
We burrow into darkness
Like rabbits or like moles,
Men that have breathed the Severn air,
Men that have eyes and souls.
To-day the grass runs over
With ripples like the sea,
And men stand up and drink air
Easy and sweet and free;
The white violet
is scented on its stalk,
the sea-violet
fragile as agate,
lies fronting all the wind
among the torn shells
on the sand-bank.
The greater blue violets
flutter on the hill,
but who would change for these
who would change for these
one root of the white sort?
Violet
your grasp is frail
on the edge of the sand-hill,
but you catch the light--
I've been along the quarry road,
And I have watched men digging wells,
And everywhere it was the same--
The stones were full of little shells.
And they are packed away in rock;
They're under sand and under clay;
And some one said that they were left
When the ocean went away.
I saw them in the stones that make
A church, and in a bridge.
They're hidden in the solid rock
But they show along the edge.
You see them in foundation stones;
They show in creeks and waterfalls;
And once I saw them on the jail--
More little shells in walls.
Within my house of patterned horn
I sleep in such a bed
As men may keep before they're born
And after they are dead.
Sticks and stones may break their bones,
And words may make them bleed;
There is not one of them who owns
An armor to his need.
Tougher than hide or lozenged bark,
Snow-storm and thunder proof,
And quick with sun, and thick with dark,
Is this my darling roof.
Men's troubled dreams of death and birth
Pulse mother-o'-pearl to black;
I bear the rainbow bubble Earth
Square on my scornful back.