SONNET : A PEARL.
["I fiction is it beautiful cliseass of the I am inclined to believe that bran. Something, an incident or an experience, or a reftection, gots imbedded, incrusted, in tho properly constituted mind, and becomes the nucleus of a pearl of romance. " Stoat:is and Story.Telling," by Andrew Lang, in the Idles. for Angina.]
A little grain of sand,—a common grain That swelled th' uncounted millions of the shore, Drifted upon an oyster's marble floor, And there for years did secretly remain ; Until (oh! fair reward of toil and pain !) Men saw a radiance through the open door,— When it abandoned shelter, prized before, And, as a beauteous pearl, oame forth again.
So, in the mind creative lies a thought,— A common incident of every day,— Till it becomes a pearl of fiction, rare, With subtle iridescent beauty fraught, —.
Which, raised from depths of silence where it lay, Sets all the little gaping world a-stare.
ALICE F. BARRY.
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