1.- THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS.

["The Chambered Nautilus" is one of the charming lyrics introduced by Holmes into The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. "I will read you a few lines," says the Autocrat, “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?"]

THIS is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,1
Sails the unshadowed main,

The venturous bark that flings

On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted,2 where the Siren sings,

And coral reefs lie bare,

3

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,

1 feign, make believe.

2 In gulfs enchanted, etc. The nautilus is found in the warm waters of the Mediterranean Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Gulf of Mexico.

3 Siren, one of three (or two) damsels fabled by the classic poets

to have dwelt near the island of Capres in the Mediterranean, and to have sung with such sweetness that they who sailed by forgot their country, and died in an ecstasy of delight.

4 sea-maids, in Grecian mythology, the nercides, or sea-nymphs.

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!1

Year after year beheld the silent toil

That spread his lustrous coil; 2

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 wreathéd horn!
While on mine ear it rings,

Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:

unsealed. To | is, the lesson taught by the habits of this animal. The lesson is found in the last stanza.

1 Its webs .. understand this stanza, it should be borne in mind that the poet has before him a specimen of the nautilus, cut into sections and so revealing its inner structure.

2 coil, the convolutions of the shell, the "spiral" spoken of in the next line.

8 the heavenly message: that

4 Triton, a fabled sea demigod, the son of Neptune and Venus, and the trumpeter of Neptune. Holmes has here in mind a line of Wordsworth's,

"Or hear old Triton blow his wreathéd horn."

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!

Leave thy low-vaulted past!1

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!

2. – THE PROMISE.2

[This poem was written on the occasion of a fair held for some benevolent purpose.]

3

NOT charity we ask,

Nor yet thy gift refuse;"

Please thy light fancy with the easy task

Only to look and choose.

The little-heeded toy

That wins thy treasured gold
May be the dearest memory, holiest joy,
Of coming years untold.

Heaven rains on every heart,
But there its showers divide,

1 thy low-vaulted past. plain the metaphor.

Ex-New Testament the words in which
Jesus clothes this promise.

2 The promise. The "promise" here referred to is that spoken of in the last stanza. Quote from the]

3 charity, literally love, but here meaning alms-giving.

4 refuse. See Glossary.

The drops of mercy choosing as they part
The dark or glowing side.1

One kindly deed may turn
The fountain of thy soul

To love's sweet day-star, that shall o'er thee burn
Long as its currents roll!

The pleasures thou hast planned, -
Where shall their memory be

When the white angel with the freezing hand 2
Shall sit and watch by thee?

Living, thou dost not live,

If mercy's spring run dry;

What Heaven has lent thee wilt thou freely give,3 Dying, thou shalt not die!

He promised even so!

To thee His lips repeat,

Behold, the tears that soothed thy sister's woe
Have washed thy Master's feet!

3. THE LIVING TEMPLE.

NoT in the world of light alone,
Where God has built his blazing throne,

1 Heaven rains . . . side. Express in your own words.

2 the white angel, etc. What is meant by this figurative expression? |

8 wilt thou freely give if thou wilt freely give. Transpose this stanza into the prose order.

4 soothed. Give a synonym.

Nor yet alone in earth below,

With belted seas that come and go,
And endless isles of sunlit green,
Is all thy Maker's glory seen :
Look in upon thy wondrous frame, -
Eternal wisdom still the same!

The smooth, soft air with pulse-like waves
Flows murmuring through its hidden caves,1
Whose streams of brightening purple rush,
Fired with a new and livelier blush,2
While all their burden of decay
The ebbing current steals away,

And red with Nature's flame they start
From the warm fountains of the heart.

No rest that throbbing slave may ask,
For ever quivering o'er his task,
While far and wide a crimson jet
Leaps forth to fill the woven net
Which in unnumbered crossing tides
The flood of burning life divides,
Then, kindling each decaying part,
Creeps back to find the throbbing heart.

But warmed with that unchanging flame
Behold the outward moving frame,

1 its hidden caves, the lungs.

2 brightening purple ... blush:

3 The ebbing current, the veins. 4 that throbbing slave. The

that is, the arterial blood oxygen-heart. ated by the air.

5 the woven net, etc. Explain.