Scarlett Rocks

I thought of life, the outer and the inner,
As I was walking by the sea:
How vague, unshapen this, and that, though thinner,
Yet hard and dear 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! "