What god it was I cannot say,
But one there was, when Jove was king,
Who, wandering by some Grecian bay,
Picked up a vacant shell that lay
Bleached on the shore, a dry, unsavory thing.

Nor is my memory well informed
(No Lemprière's at hand to blab)
What tenant had this mansion warmed;
Something with which the Ægean swarmed,
Something of lobster-kind, perhaps, or crab.

But he, this cunning child of heaven,
Trimmed it according to his wish,
Crossed it with fibres,—three, or seven,
Or, as Pausanias thinks, eleven,—
And gave a language to the poor, dead fish.

At once, the house, which, even when filled
By its old habitant, was dumb,
Now, as the immortal artist willed
A little sea-Odèon trilled,
And trembled low to the celestial thumb.

Enraptured with his new invention,
Up soared he to the blissful seat,
And, having caught even Jove's attention,
Yea, calmed a family dissension,
Went serenading through the starry street.

With us, the story's the reverse:
Our souls are born already strung,
But, 'twixt the cradle and the hearse,
Creeps a change o'er us—for the worse!
The heart hath music only when 't is young.

For soon there comes a sordid god,
Who snaps the precious chords of sound,
And leaves the soul an empty pod,
A yellow husk,—a dull, hard clod,
A faded shell, in which no voice is found,

Save when some bold but faltering hand,
That dares to strike the tyrant Time,
Tries his first impulse to command,
And, where he loftily had planned,
Spends the last ebbings of his youth in rhyme.