few lines, if you do not object,
suggested by looking at a section of one of those chambered shells
to which is given the name of Pearly Nautilus. We need not trouble
ourselves about the distinction between this and the Paper
Nautilus, the Argonauta of the ancients. The name applied to both
shows that each has long been compared to a ship, as you may see
more fully in Webster's Dictionary, or the "Encyclopedia," to which
he refers. If you will look into Roget's Bridgewater Treatise, you
will find a figure of one of these shells, and a section of it.
The last will show you the series of enlarging compartments
successively dwelt in by the animal that inhabits the shell, which
is built in a widening spiral. Can you find no lesson in this?

THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS.

This 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 clambered 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 wreathed 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!

CHAPTER V

A lyric conception--my friend, the Poet, said--hits me like a
bullet in the forehead. I have often had the blood drop from my
cheeks when it struck, and felt that I turned as white as death.
Then comes a creeping as of centipedes running down the spine,
--the