even to spread a kind of sail
so that the wind might drive it along the surface. What interests us in
this poem is the way the nautilus _grows_. Just as a tree when sawed
down has the record of its age in the number of its rings, so does the
nautilus measure its age by the ever-widening compartments of its shell.
These it has successively occupied. The poet, looking upon the now empty
shell, thinks of human life as growing in the same way. We advance from
one state of being to another, each nobler than the one which preceded
it, until the spirit leaves its shell altogether and attains a glorious
and perfect freedom.

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sailed 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 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!

_Oliver Wendell Holmes._

PIPPA'S SONG

This little song vibrates with an optimism that embraces the whole
universe. A frequent error in quoting it is the substitution of the word
_well_ for _right_. Browning is no such shallow optimist as to believe
that all is well with the world, but he does maintain that things ar