To a snail

Marianne Moore

If “compression is the first grace of style,”  

you have it. Contractility is a virtue  

as modesty is a virtue.  

It is not the acquisition of any one thing  

that is able to adorn,  

or the incidental quality that occurs  

as a concomitant of something well said,  

that we value in style,  

but the principle that is hid:  

in the absence of feet, “a method of conclusions”;  

“a knowledge of principles,”  

in the curious phenomenon of your occipital horn.