Poems (Scudder)/Aqua-marines
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.