THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS
by: Oliver Wendell Holmes
(1809-1894)
- HIS is the
ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
- Sails the unshadowed main, --
- The venturous bark that flings
- On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
- In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,
- And coral reefs lie bare,
- Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.
-
- Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
- Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
- And every chambered cell,
- Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
- As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
- Before thee lies revealed, --
- Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!
-
- Year after year beheld the silent toil
- That spread his lustrous coil;
- Still, as the spiral grew,
- He left the past year's dwelling for the new,
- Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
- Built up its idle door,
- Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.
-
- Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
- Child of the wandering sea,
- Cast from her lap, forlorn!
- From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
- Than ever Triton blew from wreathèd horn!
- While on mine ear it rings,
- Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:
--
-
- Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
- As the swift seasons roll!
- Leave thy low-vaulted past!
- Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
- Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
- Till thou at length art free,
- Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!
"The Chambered Nautilus"
is reprinted from The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell
Holmes. Oliver Wendell Holmes. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin,
1895. |
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