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John Bartlett (1820–1905). Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. 1919.

5344 Walter Savage Landor 1775-1864 John Bartlett

 
NUMBER:5344
AUTHOR:Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864)
QUOTATION:But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue
Within, and they that lustre have imbibed
In the sun’s palace-porch, where when unyoked
His chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave:
Shake one, and it awakens; then apply
Its polisht lips to your attentive ear,
And it remembers its august abodes,
And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there. 1
ATTRIBUTION:Gebir. Book i. (1798).
 
Note 1.
See Wordsworth, Quotation 160.

Poor shell! that Wordsworth so pounded and flattened in his marsh it no longer had the hoarseness of a sea, but of a hospital.—Walter Savage Landor: Letter to John Forster. [back]