Poem by Edwin John Dove Pratt

The Shark

He seemed to know the harbor,
So leisurely he swam;
His fin,
Like a piece of sheet-iron,
Three-cornered,
And with knife-edge,
Stirred not a bubble
As it moved
With its base-line on the water.

His body was tubular
And tapered
And smoke-blue,
And as he passed the wharf
He turned,
And snapped at a flat-fish
That was dead and floating.
And I saw the flash of a white throat.
And a double row of white teeth,
And eyes of metallic grey,
Hard and narrow and slit.

Then out of the harbor,
With that three-cornered fin
Shearing without a bubble the water,
Lithely,
Leisurely,
He swam—
That strange fish,
Tubular, tapered, smoke-blue,
Part vulture, part wolf.
Part neither—for his blood was cold.

1. The Toll of the Bells
2. The Ground-Swell
3. In Absentia
4. The Secret of the Sea
5. Loss of the Steamship Florizel

Alfred Douglas The Shark ("A treacherous monster is the Shark")

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