I’m glad the sky is painted blue;
    And the earth is painted green;
  And such a lot of nice fresh air
    All sandwiched in between.

Anonymous.

THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS

The nautilus is a small mollusk that creeps upon the bottom of the sea, though it used to be supposed to swim, or 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 are right with the world, for in spite of its present evils it is slowly working its way toward perfection, and in the great scheme of things it may make these evils themselves an instrument to move it toward its ultimate goal.