Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. V. Browning to Rupert Brooke

Thomas Edward Brown (1830–1897)

Scarlett Rocks

I THOUGHT of life, the outer and the inner,

As I was walking by the sea:

How vague, unshapen this, and that, though thinner,

Yet hard and clear in its rigidity.

Then took I up the fragment of a shell,

And saw its accurate loveliness,

And searched its filmy lines, its pearly cell,

And all that keen contention to express

A finite thought. And then I recognised

God’s working in the shell from root to rim,

And said:—“He works till He has realised—

O Heaven! if I could only work like Him!”