And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.
Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wreck’d is the ship of pearl!
And every chamber’d cell,
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies reveal’d,—
Its iris’d ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unseal’d!
Year after year beheld the silent toil