Page:Poems that every child should know (ed. Burt, 1904).djvu/186

148 The Finding of the Lyre.

lay upon the ocean's shore

What once a tortoise served to cover;

A year and more, with rush and roar,

The surf had rolled it over,

Had played with it, and flung it by,

As wind and weather might decide it,

Then tossed it high where sand-drifts dry

Cheap burial might provide it.

It rested there to bleach or tan,

The rains had soaked, the sun had burned it;

With many a ban the fisherman

Had stumbled o'er and spurned it;

And there the fisher-girl would stay,

Conjecturing with her brother

How in their play the poor estray

Might serve some use or other.

So there it lay, through wet and dry,

As empty as the last new sonnet,

Till by and by came Mercury,

And, having mused upon it,

"Why, here," cried he, "the thing of things

In shape, material, and dimension!

Give it but strings, and, lo, it sings,

A wonderful invention!"