Read "Song from "Maud"" by Alfred Tennyson online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
See what a lovely shell,
Small and pure as a pearl,
Lying close to my foot,
Frail, but a work divine,
Made so fairily well
With delicate spire and whorl,
How exquisitely minute,
A miracle of design!
What is it? a learned man / Could give it a clumsy name. / Let him name it who can, / The beauty would be the same.
The tiny cell is forlorn, / Void of the little living will / That made it stir on the shore. / Did he stand at the diamond door / Of his house in a rainbow frill? / Did he push, when he was uncurl'd, / A golden foot or a fairy horn / Thro' his dim water-world.
Slight, to be crushed with a tap / Of my finger-nail on the sand, / Small, but a work divine, / Frail, but of force to withstand, / Year upon year, the shock / Of cataract seas that snap / The three-decker's oaken spine / Athwart the ledges of rock, / Here on the Breton strand!