Reflection: Chambered Nautilus

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
And every chambered cell,	10
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,—
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
And every chambered cell,	10
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,—
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
And every chambered cell,	10
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,—
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
And every chambered cell,	10
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,—
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
And every chambered cell,	10
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,—
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

The Chambered Nautilus is a poem about a creature who lives in a shell and is on a journey to magical lands.  There are five paragraphs, or parts to the poem, and each one has an impactful meaning. 

The first paragraph is a basic background of what is going on.  

This section of the poem is basically saying that the nautilus is sailing in a magical land with mermaids.  There is really not much to this part of the poem, besides what is here.

I was having a little trouble getting my insertion point in the right area so, I instead of going each part at a time, I put the poem and will  reference it below it.

The first paragraph does not have much significance besides the fact that the creature is sailing to magical islands that have mermaids.

The second paragraph, the shell breaks, and everything inside of it is seen “Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl” (Holmes). It is kind of depressing to hear that it was broken because it had worked hard to become how big it was.

The third paragraph, is saying that the creature had worked so hard every year to build its shell to make it bigger because it was growing. “Year after year beheld the silent toil” (Holmes). It had become bigger so it needed to build up its shell.

The fourth paragraph is telling us that the nautilus is dead. “From thy dead lips a clearer note is born” (Holmes).  The nautilus is no longer living.

The last paragraph is saying that the nautilus needs to continue to grow and build his shell, each level, better than the last. “Let each new temple, nobler than the last” (Holmes).

Oliver Wendell Holmes began the poem by recalling a myth specific to this animal; as "poets feign" (line 1), it could stretch "webs of living gauze" (line 8) across the shell and use that living sail to cross the open ocean. This gives rise to speculation as to the enchanted gulfs it could explore, home to Sirens (line 5; in Greek mythology these were sea-nymphs who called sailors to their doom) and sea-maids (mermaids; line 7) that lie on naked coral reefs "to sun their streaming hair" (line 7).
He cannot know any of that since he has only the empty shell on hand. He accurately describes its discrete chambered cells and their "irised ceiling" (line 14; the inner shell has a mother-of-pearl shine), but returns to speculation in describing its "frail tenant" and with a "dim dreaming life" (lines 11–12) (Huff).  I thought that this criticism was all relevant so I put it all in.  It brings up the question of how the author, Holmes could know everything with only the shell.

"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. 07 Dec.

Huff, Randall. "'The Chambered Nautilus'." The Facts On File Companion to American Poetry, vol. 1. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2007.Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.