Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader · Chapter 314=396.= Sonnet to a Clam

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Inglorious friend! most confident I am Thy life is one of very little ease; Albeit men mock thee with their similes, And prate of being "happy as a clam!" What though thy shell protects thy fragile head From the sharp bailiffs of the briny sea? Thy valves are, sure, no safety-valves to thee, While rakes are free to desecrate thy bed, And bear thee off,—as foemen take their spoil,— Far from thy friends and family to roam; Forced, like a Hessian, from thy native home, To meet destruction in a foreign broil! Though thou art tender, yet thy humble bard Declares, O clam! thy case is shocking hard!

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=Lucy Hooper, 1816-1841.= (Manual, p. 524.)