BY O. W. HOLMES
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894): An American physician and author. He wrote two novels, "Elsie Venner" and "The Guardian Angel," some medical treatises, and several volumes of poems. His most popular works are, however, three series of papers contributed to the Atlantic Monthly- "The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table," "The Professor at the Breakfast-Table," and "The Poet at the Breakfast-Table." These papers abound in wit and humor and shrewd insight into human character. Among the poems interspersed throughout the "Autocrat" papers is Holmes"s most admired poem, "The Chambered Nautilus." "I wrote that poem," Holmes said, "at white heat. When it was finished I took it to my wife who was sewing in an adjoining room and said, "I think I have the best poem that I have ever written," and I have never changed my mind about it."This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main,--The venturous bark that flingsOn 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.
1 The chambered or pearly nautilus: a small sea animal inhabiting a shell having many chambers or cavities, each of which is occupied in succession. As the animal increases in size, it advances, forming a larger chamber and partitioning off the one last occupied.
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 iris ceiling rent, its sunless crypt1 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 his shining archway through,Built up his 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 Triton2 blew from wreathed horn!
While on mine ear it rings,
Through the deep eaves of thought I hear a voice that sings: --1Crypt: secret place; vault.
2Triton: according to Greek mythology, a sea god who raised or calmed the billows by playing on a conch shell.
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!