The Enchanted Shell
By H. Cordelia Ray
Annotations by Rene Marzuk
Fair, fragile Una, golden-haired, With melancholy, dark gray eyes, Sits on a rock by laughing waves, Gazing into the radiant skies; And holding to her ear a shell, A rosy shell of wondrous form; Quite plaintively to her it coos Marvelous lays of sea and storm. It whispers of a fairy home With coral halls and pearly floors, Where mermaids clad in glist’ning gold Guard smilingly the jeweled doors. She listens and her weird gray eyes Grow weirder in their pensive gaze. The sea birds toss her tangled curls, The skiff lights glimmer through the haze. Oh, strange sea-singer! what has lent Such fascination to thy spell? Is some celestial guardian Prisoned within thee, tiny shell? The maid sits rapt until the stars In myriad shining clusters gleam; “Enchanted Una,” she is called By boatmen gliding down the stream. The tempest beats the restless seas, The wind blows loud, fierce from the skies; Sweet, sylph-like Una clasps the shell, Peace brooding in her quiet eyes. The wind blows wilder, darkness comes, The rock is bare, night birds soar far; Thick clouds scud o’er the gloomy heav’ns Unvisited by any star. Where is quaint Una? On some isle, Dreaming ‘mid music, may she be? Or does she listen to the shell In coral halls within the sea? The boatmen say on stormy nights They see rare Una with the shell, Sitting in pensive attitude, Is it a vision? Who can tell?
RAY, H. CORDELIA. “THE ENCHANTED SHELL,” IN THE UPWARD PATH: A READER FOR COLORED CHILDREN, ED. MYRON T. PRITCHARD AND MARY WHITE OVINGTON, 63-5. NEW YORK: HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE, 1920.
Contexts
Ray’s poem was included in The Upward Path: A Reader for Colored Children, published in 1920 and compiled by Myron T. Pritchard and Mary White Ovington. The volume’s foreword states that, “to the present time, there has been no collection of stories and poems by Negro writers, which colored children could read with interest and pleasure and in which they could find a mirror of the traditions and aspirations of their race.”
Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:
lay: A short lyric or narrative poem intended to be sung.
scud: To run or move briskly or hurriedly; to dart nimbly from place to place. Also, to sail or move swiftly on the water. Now chiefly (and in technical nautical use exclusively), to run before a gale with little or no sail.
skiff: A small seagoing boat, adapted for rowing and sailing.
Resources for Further Study
- Read other poems by H. Cordelia Ray at the Poetry Foundation‘s website.
- H. Cordelia Ray’s father, Charles Bennett Ray (1807-1886), was a member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, “conductor” of the Underground Railroad, and editor of The Colored American newspaper (1837-1841).
