Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. V. Browning to Rupert Brooke
Thomas Edward Brown (18301897)Scarlett Rocks
I
As I was walking by the sea:
How vague, unshapen this, and that, though thinner,
Yet hard and clear in its rigidity.
Then took I up the fragment of a shell,
And saw its accurate loveliness,
And searched its filmy lines, its pearly cell,
And all that keen contention to express
A finite thought. And then I recognised
God’s working in the shell from root to rim,
And said:—“He works till He has realised—
O Heaven! if I could only work like Him!”