Ernest Charles Jones

The Sea Shell on the Desert

Mournful murmurer—whence thy music?
Singing chimes of distant seas!
Constant harper!—bard in exile,
Come! translate thy rhapsodies!

"Oh! 'mid waters green I listed,
Billows sing and oceans roar—
And the flowing in the deepness,
And the thunder on the shore!

"For in far back generations,
Here the tides majestic ran,
Till the cycles of creations
Dried them to a burning span.

And those boundless waters spurned me,
With their strong tempestuous hand—
Great, and huge, and wild they cast me
Into exile on the strand.

But the sea that bore me, perished
With its million mighty waves;
Sleeps the music that it cherished,
In their lone and arid graves!

Mountains lofty shake their heather
Where the depths of water flowed,
And where coral paths were shining,
Winds the dry and dusty road.

But the memory of those oceans,
And the grandeur of their tone,
I, the bard that they rejected,
Cherish and record alone.