and no movement unimproved,
Laid line on line, on terrace terrace spread,
To swell the heightening, brightening gradual mound,
By marvellous structure climbing tow'rds the day.
Each wrought alone, yet altogether wrought,
Unconscious, not unworthy, instruments,
By which a hand invisible was rearing
A new creation in the secret deep.
Omnipotence wrought in them, with them, by them;
Hence what Omnipotence alone could do,
Worms did. I saw the living pile ascend.
The mausoleum of its architects,
Still dying upwards as their labours closed:
Slime the material, but the slime was turn'd
To adamant, by their petrific touch;
Frail were their frames, ephemeral their lives,
Their masonry imperishable. All
Life's needful functions, food, exertion, rest,
By nice economy of Providence
Were overruled to carry on the process.
Which out of water brought forth solid rock.

"Atom by atom thus the burthen grew,
Even like an infant in the womb, till Time
Deliver'd ocean of that monstrous birth,
--A coral island, stretching east and west,
In God's own language to its parent saying,
'Thus far, no farther, shalt thou go; and here
Shall thy proud waves be stay'd:'--A point at first
It peer'd above those waves; a point so small,
I just perceived it, fix'd where all was floating:
And when a bubble cross'd it, the blue film
Expanded like a sky above the speck;
That speck became a hand-breadth; day and night
It spread, accumulated, and ere long
Presented to my view a dazzling plain.
White as the moon amid the sapphire sea;
Bare at low water, and as still as death,
But when the tide came gurgling o'er the surface,
'Twas like a resurrection of the dead:
From graves innumerable, punctures fine
In the close coral, capillary swarms
Of reptiles, horrent as Medusa's snakes,
Cover'd the bald-pate reef; then all was life,
And indefatigable industry:
The artisans were twisting to and fro.
In idle-seeming convolutions; yet
They never vanish'd with the ebbing surge,
Till pellicle on pellicle, and layer
On layer, was added to the growing mass.
Ere long the reef o'ertopt the spring-flood's height,
And mock'd the billows when they leapt upon it,
Unable to maintain their slippery hold,
And falling down in foam-wreaths round its verge.
Steep were the flanks, sharp precipices,
Descending to their base in ocean gloom.
Chasms few, and narrow