THE CORAL ISLAND.
On a stony eminence, that stood
Girt with inferior ridges, at the point,
Where light and darkness meet in spectral gloom.
Midway between the height and depth of ocean,
I mark'd a whirlpool in perpetual play,
As though the mountain were itself alive,
And catching prey on every side, with feelers
Countless as sunbeams, slight as gossamer:
Ere long transfigured, each fine film became
An independent creature, self-employd,
Yet but an agent in one common work,
The slim of all their individual labours.
Shap'less they seem'd, but endless shape assumed;
Elongated like worms, they writhed and shrunk
Their tortuous bodies to grotesque dimensions;
Compress'd like wedges, radiated like stars,
Branching like sea-weed, whirl'd in dazzling rings;
Subtle and variable as flickering flames,
Sight could not trace their evanescent changes,
Nor comprehend their motions, till minute
And curious observation caught the clew
To this live labyrinth,—where every one,
By instinct taught, perform'd its little task;
—To build its dwelling and its sepulchre,
From its own essence exquisitely modell'd;
There breed, and die, and leave a progeny,
Still multiplied beyond the reach of numbers.
To frame new cells and tombs; then breed and die,
As all their ancestors had done,—and rest,
Hermetically sealed, each in its shrine,
A statue in this temple of oblivion!
Millions of millions thus, from age to age,
With simplest skill, and toil unwearyable.
No moment and no movement unimproved,
Laid line on line, on terrace terrace spread,
To swell the heightening, brightening gradual mound,
By marvellous structure climbing tow'rds the day.
Each wrought alone, yet altogether wrought,
Unconscious, not unworthy, instruments,
By which a hand invisible was rearing
A new creation in the secret deep.
Omnipotence wrought in them, with them, by them;
Hence what Omnipotence alone could do,
Worms did. I saw the living pile ascend.
The mausoleum of its architects,
Still dying upwards as their labours closed:
Slime the material, but the slime was turn'd
To adamant, by their petrific touch;
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.
Which out of water brought forth solid rock.
"Atom by atom thus the burthen grew,
Even like an infant in the womb, till Time
Deliver'd ocean of that monstrous birth,
—A coral island, stretching east and west,
In God's own language to its parent saying,
'Thus far, no farther, shalt thou go; and here
Shall thy proud waves be stay'd:'—A point at first
It peer'd above those waves; a point so small,
I just perceived it, fix'd where all was floating:
And when a bubble cross'd it, the blue film
Expanded like a sky above the speck;
That speck became a hand-breadth; day and night
It spread, accumulated, and ere long
Presented to my view a dazzling plain.
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,
'Twas like a resurrection of the dead:
From graves innumerable, punctures fine
In the close coral, capillary swarms
Of reptiles, horrent as Medusa's snakes,
Cover'd the bald-pate reef; then all was life,
And indefatigable industry:
The artisans were twisting to and fro.
In idle-seeming convolutions; yet
They never vanish'd with the ebbing surge,
Till pellicle on pellicle, and layer
On layer, was added to the growing mass.
Ere long the reef o'ertopt the spring-flood's height,
And mock'd the billows when they leapt upon it,
Unable to maintain their slippery hold,
And falling down in foam-wreaths round its verge.
Steep were the flanks, sharp precipices,
Descending to their base in ocean gloom.
Chasms few, and narrow and irregular,
Form'd harbours, 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,
With heaven itself seen like a lake below."
Montgomery's Pelican Island.