Poems (Scudder)/Aqua-marines
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AQUA-MARINES
How by your chill transparency
And timid color hints do ye
Mock the earth-mother—for your name
Was taken from the fostering sea
Nor find I likeness to the flame
That shaped you once. Unvarying round
And tremulous cerulean ray
Like milky bubbles of the spray
That mid the crisp beach-weed are found.
—Know ye the pools among the rocks
Where gold-moss hangs like sirens' locks?
—Know ye the sea-fays' palace hall
Where the low sunlight lies between
Fantastic columns of the green
Rough chrysoprase, and where the small
Barnacles build a mimic tower
Beside a little lake where float
Quaint likenesses of pleasure-boat
And idling swans? Doth the rock-flower
Display your blue and green and white
While shrinking from the icy shower
A wave flings o'er the boulders' height?
I must believe if it be sooth
That pearls the full moon's children are,
The spirit of some vanished star
Lost long ago in the world's youth
Down the dark abyss of the years
Now dwells within your shallow spheres.
And timid color hints do ye
Mock the earth-mother—for your name
Was taken from the fostering sea
Nor find I likeness to the flame
That shaped you once. Unvarying round
And tremulous cerulean ray
Like milky bubbles of the spray
That mid the crisp beach-weed are found.
—Know ye the pools among the rocks
Where gold-moss hangs like sirens' locks?
—Know ye the sea-fays' palace hall
Where the low sunlight lies between
Fantastic columns of the green
Rough chrysoprase, and where the small
Barnacles build a mimic tower
Beside a little lake where float
Quaint likenesses of pleasure-boat
And idling swans? Doth the rock-flower
Display your blue and green and white
While shrinking from the icy shower
A wave flings o'er the boulders' height?
I must believe if it be sooth
That pearls the full moon's children are,
The spirit of some vanished star
Lost long ago in the world's youth
Down the dark abyss of the years
Now dwells within your shallow spheres.