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(From The Pelican Island)
I SAW the living pile ascend, | |
| The mausoleum of its architects, | |
| Still dying upwards as their labors closed: | |
| Slime the material, but the slime was turned | |
| To adamant by their petrific touch; | 5 |
| Frail were their frames, ephemeral their lives, | |
| Their masonry imperishable. All | |
| Life’s needful functions, food, exertion, rest, | |
| By nice economy of Providence | |
| Were overruled to carry on the process | 10 |
| Which out of water brought forth solid rock. | |
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| Atom by atom thus the burden grew, | |
| Even like an infant in the womb, till Time | |
| Delivered Ocean of that monstrous birth,— | |
| A coral island, stretching east and west, | 15 |
| In God’s own language to its parent saying, | |
| “Thus far, nor farther, shalt thou go; and here | |
| Shall thy proud waves be stayed.” A point at first, | |
| It peered above those waves; a point so small | |
| I just perceived it, fixed where all was floating; | 20 |
| And when a bubble crossed it, the blue film | |
| Expanded, like a sky above the speck. | |
| That speck became a hand-breadth; day and night | |
| It spread, accumulated, and erelong | |
| Presented to my view a dazzling plain, | 25 |
| White as the moon amid the sapphire sea; | |
| Bare at low water, and as still as death; | |
| But when the tide came gurgling o’er the surface, | |
| ’T was like a resurrection of the dead: | |
| From graves innumerable, punctures fine | 30 |
| In the close coral, capillary swarms | |
| Of reptiles, horrent as Medusa’s snakes, | |
| Covered the bald-pate reef; then all was life | |
| And indefatigable industry; | |
| The artisans were twisting to and fro | 35 |
| In idle-seeming convolutions, yet | |
| They never vanished with the ebbing surge, | |
| Till pellicle on pellicle, and layer | |
| On layer, was added to the growing mass. | |
| Erelong the reef o’ertopt the spring-flood’s height, | 40 |
| And mocked the billows when they leaped upon it, | |
| Unable to maintain their slippery hold, | |
| And falling down in foam-wreaths round its verge. | |
| Steep were the flanks, with precipices sharp, | |
| Descending to their base in ocean-gloom. | 45 |
| Chasms, few and narrow and irregular, | |
| Formed harbors safe at once and perilous,— | |
| Safe for defence, but perilous to enter. | |
| A sea-lake shone amidst the fossil isle, | |
| Reflecting in a ring its cliffs and caverns, | 50 |
| With heaven itself seen like a lake below. | |
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| Compared with this amazing edifice, | |
| Raised by the weakest creatures in existence, | |
| What are the works of intellectual man? | |
| Towers, temples, palaces, and sepulchres; | 55 |
| Ideal images in sculptured forms, | |
| Thoughts hewn in columns or in domes expanded, | |
| Fancies through every maze of beauty shown; | |
| Pride, gratitude, affection, turned to marble | |
| In honor of the living or the dead,— | 60 |
| What are they? fine-wrought miniatures of art, | |
| Too exquisite to bear the weight of dew, | |
| Which every morn lets fall in pearls upon them, | |
| Till all their pomp sinks down in mouldering relics, | |
| Yet in their ruin lovelier than their prime! | 65 |
| Dust in the balance, atoms in the gale, | |
| Compared with these achievements in the deep, | |
| Were all the monuments of olden time, | |
| In days when there were giants on the earth: | |
| Babel’s stupendous folly, though it aimed | 70 |
| To scale heaven’s battlements, was but a toy, | |
| The plaything of the world in infancy; | |
| The ramparts, towers, and gates of Babylon, | |
| Built for eternity, though, where they stood, | |
| Ruin itself stands still for lack of work, | 75 |
| And Desolation keeps unbroken sabbath,— | |
| Great Babylon, in its full moon of empire, | |
| Even when its “head of gold” was smitten off, | |
| And from a monarch changed into a brute,— | |
| Great Babylon was like a wreath of sand, | 80 |
| Left by one tide and cancelled by the next;— | |
| Egypt’s dread wonders, still defying Time, | |
| Where cities have been crumbled into sand, | |
| Scattered by winds beyond the Libyan desert, | |
| Or melted down into the mud of Nile, | 85 |
| And cast in tillage o’er the corn-sown fields, | |
| Where Memphis flourished, and the Pharaohs reigned,— | |
| Egypt’s gray piles of hieroglyphic grandeur, | |
| That have survived the language which they speak, | |
| Preserving its dead emblems to the eye, | 90 |
| Yet hiding from the mind what these reveal; | |
| Her pyramids would be mere pinnacles, | |
| Her giant statues, wrought from rocks of granite, | |
| But puny ornaments, for such a pile | |
| As this stupendous mound of catacombs, | 95 |
| Filled with dry mummies of the builder-worms. * * * * * | |
| Nine times the age of man that coral reef | |
| Had bleached beneath the torrid noon, and borne | |
| The thunder of a thousand hurricanes, | |
| Raised by the jealous ocean to repel | 100 |
| That strange encroachment on his old domain. | |
| His rage was impotent; his wrath fulfilled | |
| The counsels of eternal Providence, | |
| And ’stablished what he strove to overturn; | |
| For every tempest threw fresh wrecks upon it; | 105 |
| Sand from the shoals, exuviæ from the deep, | |
| Fragments of shells, dead sloughs, sea-monsters’ bones, | |
| Whales stranded in the shallows, hideous weeds | |
| Hurled out of darkness by the uprooting surges; | |
| These, with unutterable relics more, | 110 |
| Heaped the rough surface, till the various mass, | |
| By Nature’s chemistry combined and purged, | |
| Had buried the bare rock in crumbling mould, | |
| Not unproductive, but from time to time | |
| Impregnated with seeds of plants, and rife | 115 |
| With embryo animals, or torpid forms | |
| Of reptiles, shrouded in the clefts of trees | |
| From distant lands, with branches, foliage, fruit, | |
| Plucked up and wafted hither by the flood. | |
| Death’s spoils and life’s hid treasures thus enriched | 120 |
| And colonized the soil; no particle | |
| Of meanest substance but in course was turned | |
| To solid use or noble ornament. | |
| All seasons were propitious; every wind, | |
| From the hot Siroc to the wet Monsoon, | 125 |
| Tempered the crude materials; while heaven’s dew | |
| Fell on the sterile wilderness as sweetly | |
| As though it were a garden of the Lord: | |
| Nor fell in vain; each drop had its commission, | |
| And did its duty, known to him who sent it. | 130 |
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| Such time had passed, such changes had transfigured | |
| The aspect of that solitary isle, | |
| When I again, in spirit as before, | |
| Assumed mute watch above it. Slender blades | |
| Of grass were shooting through the dark-brown earth, | 135 |
| Like rays of light, transparent in the sun, | |
| Or after showers with liquid gems illumined; | |
| Fountains through filtering sluices sallied forth, | |
| And led fertility where’er they turned; | |
| Green herbage graced their banks, resplendent flowers | 140 |
| Unlocked their treasures, and let flow their fragrance. | |
| Then insect legions, pranked with gaudiest hues, | |
| Pearl, gold, and purple, swarmed into existence; | |
| Minute and marvellous creations these! | |
| Infinite multitudes on every leaf, | 145 |
| In every drop, by me discerned at pleasure,— | |
| Were yet too fine for unenlightened eye, | |
| Like stars, whose beams have never reached our world, | |
| Though science meets them midway in the heaven | |
| With prying optics, weighs them in her scale, | 150 |
| Measures their orbs, and calculates their courses;— | |
| Some barely visible, some proudly shone, | |
| Like living jewels; some grotesque, uncouth, | |
| And hideous,—giants of a race of pygmies; | |
| These burrowed in the ground, and fed on garbage; | 155 |
| Those lived deliciously on honey-dews, | |
| And dwelt in palaces of blossomed bells; | |
| Millions on millions, winged, and plumed in front, | |
| And armed with stings for vengeance or assault, | |
| Filled the dim atmosphere with hum and hurry; | 160 |
| Children of light and air and fire they seemed, | |
| Their lives all ecstasy and quick cross-motion. | |
| Thus throve this embryo universe, where all | |
| That was to be was unbegun, or now | |
| Beginning; every day, hour, instant, brought | 165 |
| Its novelty, though how or whence I knew not; | |
| Less than omniscience could not comprehend | |
| The causes of effects that seemed spontaneous, | |
| And sprang in infinite succession, linked | |
| With kindred issues infinite as they, | 170 |
| For which Almighty skill had laid the train | |
| Even in the elements of chaos,—whence | |
| The unravelling clew not for a moment lost | |
| Hold of the silent hand that drew it out. * * * * * | |
| Amphibious monsters haunted the lagoon: | 175 |
| The hippopotamus, amidst the flood | |
| Flexile and active as the smallest swimmer; | |
| But on the bank, ill-balanced and infirm, | |
| He grazed the herbage, with huge head declined, | |
| Or leaned to rest against some ancient tree: | 180 |
| The crocodile, the dragon of the waters, | |
| In iron panoply, fell as the plague, | |
| And merciless as famine, craunched his prey, | |
| While from his jaws, with dreadful fangs all serried. | |
| The life-blood dyed the waves with deadly streams: | 185 |
| The seal and the sea-lion from the gulf | |
| Came forth, and, crouching with their little ones, | |
| Slept on the shelving rocks that girt the shore, | |
| Securing prompt retreat from sudden danger: | |
| The pregnant turtle, stealing out at eve, | 190 |
| With anxious eye and trembling heart, explored | |
| The loneliest coves, and in the loose, warm sand | |
| Deposited her eggs, which the sun hatched; | |
| Hence the young brood, that never knew a parent, | |
| Unburrowed, and by instinct sought the sea; | 195 |
| Nature herself, with her own gentle hand, | |
| Dropping them one by one into the flood, | |
| And laughing to behold their antic joy | |
| When launched in their maternal element. * * * * * | |
| High on the cliffs, down on the shelly reef, | 200 |
| Or gliding like a silver-shaded cloud | |
| Through the blue heaven, the mighty albatross | |
| Inhaled the breezes, sought his humble food, | |
| Or, where his kindred like a flock reposed, | |
| Without a shepherd, on the grassy downs, | 205 |
| Smoothed his white fleece, and slumbered in their midst. | |
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| Wading through marshes, where the rank sea-weed | |
| With spongy moss and flaccid lichens strove, | |
| Flamingoes, in their crimson tunics, stalked | |
| On stately legs, with far-exploring eye; | 210 |
| Or fed and slept, in regimental lines, | |
| Watched by their sentinels, whose clarion-screams | |
| All in an instant woke the startled troop, | |
| That mounted like a glorious exhalation, | |
| And vanished through the welkin far away,— | 215 |
| Nor paused, till, on some lonely coast alighting, | |
| Again their gorgeous cohort took the field. | |
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