TO THE NAUTILUS.
Thou didst laugh at sun and breeze
In the new created seas;
Thou wast with the reptile broods
In the old sea solitudes,
Sailing in the new-made light,
With the curled-up Ammonite.
Thou surviv'dst the awful shock,
Which turn'd the ocean-bed to rock;
And chang'd its myriad living swarms
To the marble's veined forms.
Thou wert there, thy little boat,
Airy voyager! kept afloat,
O'er the waters wild and dismal,
O'er the yawning gulfs abysmal;
Amid wreck and overturning,
Rock-imbedding, heaving, burning,
Mid the tumult and the stir,
Thou, most ancient mariner!
In that pearly boat of thine,
Sail'dst upon the troubled brine.
THE SEA-SHORE.
We have thus acquired satisfactory proof that the flint of which our pebble is composed, was once fluid in an ocean teeming with beings, of genera and species unknown in a living state, and that it consolidated and became imbedded in the chalk, which was then being deposited at the bottom of the sea; hence the shells, corals, and other organic remains, which we now find attached to its surface, and enclosed in its substance. Thus much for the origin of the pebble; let us next inquire by what means it was dislodged from its rocky sepulchre, cast up from the depths of the ocean, and transported to the summit of the hill whence it was dislodged by yonder torrent. If we stroll along the sea-shore, and observe the changes which are there going on, we shall obtain an answer to these questions; for
There is a language by the lonely shore—
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar!
Byron.
The incessant dashing of the waves against the base of the chalk-cliffs, undermines the strata, and huge masses of rock are constantly giving way and falling into the waters. The chalk then becomes softened and disintegrated, and is quickly reduced to the state of mud, and transported to the tranquil depths of the ocean, where it subsides and forms new deposits; but the flints thus detached, are broken and rolled by attrition into the state of boulders, pebbles, and gravel, and ultimately of sand.