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 clambered 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!

CHAPTER V.
A LYRIC conception - my friend, the Poet, said - hits me like a

bullet in the forehead. I have often had the blood drop from my
cheeks when it struck, and felt that I turned as white as death.

Then comes a creeping as of centipedes running down the spine, -
then a gasp and a great jump of the heart, - then a sudden flush

and a beating in the vessels of the head, - then a long sigh, - and
the poem is written.

It is an impromptu, I suppose, then, if you write it so suddenly, -
I replied.

No, - said he, - far from it. I said written, but I did not say
COPIED. Every such poem has a soul and a body, and it is the body

of it, or the copy, that men read and publishers pay for. The soul
of it is born in an instant in the poet's soul. It comes to him a

thought, tangled in the meshes of a few sweet words, - words that
have loved each other from the cradle of the language, but have

never been wedded until now. Whether it will ever fully embody
itself in a bridal train of a dozen stanzas or not is uncertain;

but it exists potentially from the instant that the poet turns pale
with it. It is enough to stun and scare anybody, to have a hot

thought come crashing into his brain, and ploughing up those
parallel ruts where the wagon trains of common ideas were jogging

along in their regular sequences of association. No wonder the
ancients made the poeticalimpulsewhollyexternal. [Greek text

which cannot be reproduced] Goddess, - Muse, - divine afflatus, -
something outside always. I never wrote any verses worth reading.

I can't. I am too stupid. If I ever copied any that were worth
reading, I was only a medium.

[I was talking all this time to our boarders, you understand, -
telling them what this poet told me. The company listened rather

attentively, I thought, considering the literarycharacter of the
remarks.]

The old gentleman opposite all at once asked me if I ever read
anything better than Pope's "Essay on Man"? Had I ever perused

McFingal? He was fond of poetry when he was a boy, - his mother
taught him to say many little pieces, - he remembered one beautiful

hymn; - and the old gentleman began, in a clear, loud voice, for
his years, -

"The spaciousfirmament on high,
With all the blue ethereal sky,

And spangled heavens," -
He stopped, as if startled by our silence, and a faint flush ran up

beneath the thin white hairs that fell upon his cheek. As I looked
round, I was reminded of a show I once saw at the Museum, - the

Sleeping Beauty, I think they called it. The old man's sudden
breaking out in this way turned every face towards him, and each

kept his posture as if changed to stone. Our Celtic Bridget, or
Biddy, is not a foolish fat scullion to burst out crying for a

sentiment. She is of the serviceable, red-handed, broad-and-high-
shouldered type; one of those imported female servants who are

known in public by their amorphous style of person, their stoop
forwards, and a headlong and as it were precipitous walk, - the

waist plunging downwards into the rocking pelvis at every heavy
footfall. Bridget, constituted for action, not for emotion, was

about to deposit a plate heaped with something upon the table, when
I saw the coarse arm stretched by my shoulder arrested, -

motionless as the arm of a terra-cotta caryatid; she couldn't set
the plate down while the old gentleman was speaking!

He was quite silent after this, still wearing the slight flush on
his cheek. Don't ever think the poetry is dead in an old man

because his forehead is wrinkled, or that his manhood has left him
when his hand trembles! If they ever WERE there, they ARE there

still!
By and by we got talking again. - Does a poet love the verses

written through him, do you think, Sir? - said the divinity-
student.

So long as they are warm from his mind, carry any of his animal
heat about them, I KNOW he loves them, - I answered. When they

have had time to cool, he is more indifferent.
A good deal as it is with buckwheat cakes, - said the young fellow

whom they call John.
The last words, only, reached the ear of the economically organized

female in black bombazine . - Buckwheat is skerce and high, - she
remarked. [Must be a poor relation sponging on our landlady, -

pays nothing, - so she must stand by the guns and be ready to repel
boarders.]

I liked the turn the conversation had taken, for I had some things
I wanted to say, and so, after waiting a minute, I began again. - I

don't think the poems I read you sometimes can be fairly
appreciated, given to you as they are in the green state.

- You don't know what I mean by the GREEN STATE? Well, then, I
will tell you. Certain things are good for nothing until they have

been kept a long while; and some are good for nothing until they
have been long kept and USED. Of the first, wine is the

illustrious and immortal example. Of those which must be kept and
used I will name three, - meerschaum pipes, violins, and poems.

The meerschaum is but a poor affair until it has burned a thousand
offerings to the cloud-compelling deities. It comes to us without

complexion or flavor, - born of the sea-foam, like Aphrodite, but
colorless as PALLIDA MORS herself. The fire is lighted in its

central shrine, and gradually the juices which the broad leaves of
the Great Vegetable had sucked up from an acre and curdled into a

drachm are diffused through its thirsting pores. First a
discoloration, then a stain, and at last a rich, glowing, umber

tint spreading over the whole surface. Nature true to her old
brown autumnal hue, you see, - as true in the fire of the

meerschaum as in the sunshine of October! And then the cumulative
wealth of its fragrant reminiscences! he who inhales its vapors

takes a thousand whiffs in a single breath; and one cannot touch it
without awakening the old joys that hang around it as the smell of