Clinton Scollard

A Sea Shell

  You speak to me
  Of the long plunge and welter of the sea;
  Likewise you are
  Oracular
  Of its low melody.
  You voice its laughing moods,
  Its lyric interludes,
  Its secrecies, its sorceries, its mysteries,
  Its tragic histories.
  Aye, all that it has breathed, may breathe, shall breathe,
  You unto me bequeath;
  Thus am I made the fair inheritor
  Of that rare essence of true harmony
  Which many a land-girt exile hungers for,—
  The sea!