THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS.

THIS

HIS 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 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,

A SEA-SHELL.

From thy dead lips a clearer note is born

Than ever Triton blew from wreathèd horn.
While on mine ear it rings,

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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.

A SEA-SHELL.

SEE what a lovely shell,

Small and pure as a pearl,

Lying close to my foot.

Frail, but a work divine,

Made so fairily well

With delicate spire and whorl.

How exquisitely minute

A miracle of design!

The tiny cell is forlorn,

Void of the little living will

That made it stir on the shore.

Did he stand at the diamond door

Of his house in a rainbow frill?
Did he push, when he was uncurled,
A golden foot or a fairy horn
Through his dim water-world?

Slight, to be crushed with a tap
Of my finger-nail on the sand;
Small, but a work divine ;

Frail, but of force to withstand,
Year upon year, the shock
Of cataract seas that snap
The three-decker's oaken spine,
Athwart the ledges of rock,
Here on the Breton strand.

A FISHING-TOWN.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

Q

UAINT clusters of gray houses crowding down
Unto a river's edge; the river wide,

And flecked with fishing-boats beyond the town,
Incoming with the slow incoming tide.
Moored to the old pier-end, a smack or two
Slow dandled by the shoreward-setting swell,
And with their nets with every dip wet through,
Show their black, pitchy ribs. Some far ship's bell
Comes in the capful of light wind that hails

THE BELLS OF LYNN.

From seaward; while still louder and more loud,
Beneath the lowering hood of ashen cloud,

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Rings the hoarse fisher's shout. There nearing sails
Loom large and shadowy; and the sunset gun
Tells that another day is o'er and done.

ANON.

THE BELLS OF LYNN.

CURFEW of the setting sun! O bells of Lynn ! O requiem of the dying day! O bells of Lynn! From the dark belfries of yon cloud-cathedral wafted, Your sounds aerial seem to float, O bells of Lynn ! Borne on the evening wind across the crimson twilight, O'er land and sea they rise and fall, O bells of Lynn! The fisherman in his boat, far out beyond the headland, Listens and leisurely rows ashore, O bells of Lynn !

Over the shining sands, the wandering cattle homeward

Follow each other at your call, O bells of Lynn !

The distant lighthouse hears, and with his flaming signal

Answers you, passing the watchword on, O bells of Lynn !

And down the darkening coast run the tumultuous

surges,

And clap their hands and shout to you, O bells of

Lynn !

Till from the shuddering sea, with your wild incan

tations,

Ye summon up the spectral moon, O bells of Lynn!

And startled at the sight, like the weird woman of Endor,

Ye cry aloud and then are still, O bells of Lynn !

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

COMING HOME.

THE lift is high and blue,

And the new moon glints through

The bonnie corn-stooks o' Strathairly;
My ship's in Largo Bay,

And I ken it weel,

the way

The corn sprang green on Strathairly;
When I come back again,

'Tis an auld man walks his lane,

Slow and sad through the fields o' Strathairly.

Of the shearers that I see,

Ne'er a body kens me,

Though I kent them a' at Strathairly;
And this fisher-wife I pass,

Can she be the braw lass

That I kiss'd at the back of Strathairly?