Volume 24 53
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, 10
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 un-sealed!
Year after year beheld the silent toil^15
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, 20
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 25
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! 30
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 un-resting 35
seaPoem Summary
Stanza 1
The title “The Chambered Nautilus” refers to
a sea creature that lives in the western Pacific and
the Indian oceans and has a hard external shell, or
exoskeleton. The creature lives in and is able to
withdraw into the outermost compartment of its
shell, which consists of sealed sections and is one of
nature’s best examples of a logarithmic spiral, one
that grows at an exponential rate and appears to ex-
pand while it grows. Line 1 calls the nautilus a “ship
of pearl,” which combines a comparison to a human-
made sailing vessel with a description of the pearly
finish of the nautilus shell. The speaker then notes
that “poets feign,” or pretend, that the nautilus “Sails
the unshadowed main,” or the wide-open waters.
Lines 3, 4, and 5 continue the conceit, or ex-
tended comparison, of the nautilus to a ship, creat-
ing an image of a “venturous,” or adventurous,
wooden ship whose “purpled wings,” or sails, fly
on the “sweet summer wind.” This description
sounds like some kind of magical fairyland, and the
speaker notes that the ship, or nautilus, sails to en-
chanted “gulfs.” A gulf is a large, partially enclosed
body of water, and the word gulfhas a secondary
meaning of “chasm” or “abyss.” The speaker notes
that “the siren sings” in these gulfs. This image
refers to the beautiful and seductive water nymphs
of ancient Greek mythology that sang so beauti-
fully as to lure sailors to be destroyed on the rocks
surrounding their island. Lines 6 and 7 continue
this imagery, describing coral reefs that “lie bare.”
This image refers to the beautiful yet dangerous
reefs that can destroy a ship but is also vaguely sug-
gestive of the nude “cold sea-maids” who lie in the
sun and dry their “streaming hair.”Stanza 2
Stanza 2 discusses the nautilus’s wreckage and
death in the past tense. In line 8, the speaker’s con-
ceit continues and expands as the nautilus is said
to have “webs of living gauze,” or sails. It is im-
portant to consider which part of the nautilus refers
to the sails and which indicates the “ship of pearl.”
Logic would suggest that the sails, or “purpled
wings” and “webs of living gauze,” are the tenta-
cles and head of the creature and that the pearly
ship is the shell. In this stanza, however, the sails
do not “unfurl,” because the ship is “Wrecked” and
the nautilus is presumably dead.
In lines 10 through 14, the speaker describes
the nautilus’s empty shell, continuing to use the
comparison of a ship. The speaker discusses “every
chambered cell,” referring to the compartments and
rooms of a ship as well as the sections of the nau-
tilus’s exoskeleton, which it makes as it grows
larger, closing off old compartments and moving
into new ones. The speaker describes these aban-
doned cells as expired locations where the nau-
tilus’s “dim dreaming life” used to dwell. Line 12
refers to the nautilus as a “frail tenant” construct-
ing “his growing shell.” Line 13 refers to the reader
as “thee,” suggesting that the empty shell lies di-
rectly in front of the reader. Line 14 describes the
inside of the empty shell as having an “irised,” or
rainbow-colored, ceiling that has broken open and
let the elements into what used to be a “sunless
crypt,” or coffin.Stanza 3
Stanza 3 backtracks from the preceding
description of the nautilus’s death to describe in the
past tense its lifelong “silent toil” to create protec-
tive compartments in its spiral shell. In thisThe Chambered Nautilus