Careful Words

sinuous (adj.)

But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue

Within, and they that lustre have imbibed

In the sun's palace-porch, where when unyoked

His chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave:

Shake one, and it awakens; then apply

Its polisht lips to your attentive ear,

And it remembers its august abodes,

And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there.

Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864): Gebir. Book i. (1798).