John Bartlett (1820–1905). Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. 1919.
5344 Walter Savage Landor 1775-1864 John Bartlett
| NUMBER: | 5344 |
| AUTHOR: | Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) |
| QUOTATION: | But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue Within, and they that lustre have imbibed In the sun’s palace-porch, where when unyoked His chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave: Shake one, and it awakens; then apply Its polisht lips to your attentive ear, And it remembers its august abodes, And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there. 1 |
| ATTRIBUTION: | Gebir. Book i. (1798). |
| Note 1. See Wordsworth, Quotation 160. Poor shell! that Wordsworth so pounded and flattened in his marsh it no longer had the hoarseness of a sea, but of a hospital.—Walter Savage Landor: Letter to John Forster. [back] |