“BUILD THEE MORE NOBLE MANSIONS.”
This poem by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, known among his works as “The Chambered Nautilus,” was considered by himself as his worthiest achievement in verse, and his wish that it might live is likely to be fulfilled. It is stately, and in character and effect a rhythmic sermon from a text in “natural theology.” The biography of one of the little molluscan sea-navigators that continually enlarges its shell to adapt it to its 294 / 250 growth inspired the thoughtful lines. The third, fourth and fifth stanzas are as follows:
Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread the lustrous coil;
Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the last year's dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step the 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 wand'ring sea,
Cast from her lap forlorn!
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathéd horn!
While on my ear it rings
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings,
“Build thee more noble 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 thy outgrown shell by life's unresting sea.”
Dr. Frederic Hedge included the poem in his hymn-book but without any singing-supplement to the words.