Reflection Chambered Nautilus

In the poem, “The Chambered Nautilus” by Oliver Wendell Holmes, there are two separate meanings to it. The first meaning is the literal meaning. It says, “This is the ship of pearl”(Holmes) which of course is talking about the chambered nautilus. The poem talks about how the nautilus grows and becomes bigger by building new cells to live in. The narrator if you will talks about finding the nautilus on the shore and it being “wrecked” (Holmes). This may mean that the shell was broken open and he could see all of the cells that the nautilus had once lived in. I think the poem would be boring if it did not say this, “Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee”(Holmes). This is saying there is another meaning to the story. It is giving us a reason to read through the poem again through a new lens, through a figurative meaning.

When Holmes says, “the ship of pearl.”(Holmes) I think the figurative meaning is our lives, or us personally. The author says, “Year after year beheld the silent toil”(Holmes). It is telling us the length of time it took for the nautilus to build its shell, but it is also telling us that it takes time for us to build our lives. The poem also talks about the toil that is involved in building the shell and our lives. The nautilus does not hatch from its egg with its shell already attached, it takes “Years after year” (Holmes). In the same way we are not born fully developed and ready to go out to the world on our own. We spend the first eighteen years of our lives living with our parents learning how to survive on our own. We go to school and learn from our parents. Then Holmes writes,

“Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:-

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 seal”(Holmes).

Its saying if you want to live a better life you can not keep living as you are now, you have to keep striving to get better. If you build your life and your family you can not keep living in a one room apartment. You have to move into a bigger house. It needs to be bigger and better than the last. You can not live in the past, you must always be looking forward to the future and planning and getting ready for it. If you do not plan and prepare in life, you will not progress. It is like an athlete, if the athlete wants to get better he has to train and make himself become better, he can not just sit around and hope to magically be better when he wants to be. Do not live in the past, but always be planning for the future.

This poem exemplifies the romanticism writing in the way that it talks about nature and the nautilus forming its shell, but it does not give the scientific meaning for it.

Holmes, Oliver W. "801. The Chambered Nautilus. Oliver Wendell Holmes. 1909-14. English Poetry III: From Tennyson to Whitman. The Harvard Classics." Bartleby.com: Great Books Online -- Quotes, Poems, Novels, Classics and Hundreds More. Web. 13 Dec. 2011. .