THE ENCHANTED SHELL
H. CORDELIA RAY
Fair, fragile Una, golden-haired,
With melancholy, dark gray eyes,
Sits on a rock by laughing waves,
Gazing into the radiant skies;
And holding to her ear a shell,
A rosy shell of wondrous form;
Quite plaintively to her it coos
Marvelous lays of sea and storm.
It whispers of a fairy home
With coral halls and pearly floors,
Where mermaids clad in glist'ning gold
Guard smilingly the jeweled doors.
She listens and her weird gray eyes
Grow weirder in their pensive gaze.
The sea birds toss her tangled curls,
The skiff lights glimmer through the haze.
Oh, strange sea-singer! what has lent
Such fascination to thy spell?
Is some celestial guardian
Prisoned within thee, tiny shell?
