The Shell

Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864)

From “Gebir,” Book I.

I AM not daunted, no; I will engage.

But first, said she, what wager will you lay?

A sheep, I answered, add whate’er you will.

I cannot, she replied, make that return:

Our hided vessels in their pitchy round

Seldom, unless from rapine, hold a sheep.

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.