This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadow’d main,—
The venturous bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purple 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;
Wreck’d is the ship of pearl!
And every chambered cell, where its dim dreaming life
Linger’d, is a corse; and every stiffened strife
Is but the ghost of the glad days gone by.
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.