Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/236

206 Landor complained that Wordsworth stole his shell, and "pounded and flattened it in his marsh" of "The Excursion":

Byron acknowledged his obligations to "Gebir" for his lines in "The Island," beginning,—

And now, as we near the close of the century which And as now reinterpreted by Lee-Hamilton. "Gebir" initiated, Eugene Lee-Hamilton devotes one of his remarkable sonnets to this same murmur of the shell, and I cannot find a more poetic, more impassioned recognition of the veil which modern doubt is drawing between our saddened eyes and the beautiful pathetic fallacy:—

The hollow sea-shell which for years hath stood

On dusty shelves, when held against the ear

Proclaims its stormy parent; and we hear

The faint far murmur of the breaking flood.

We hear the sea. The sea? It is the blood

In our own veins, impetuous and near,

And pulses keeping pace with hope and fear

And with our feelings' ever-shifting mood.