“The Chambered Nautilus” is a poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes which has been taught and discussed in school rooms for generations in America. In it Holmes writes of the “silent toil” of the nautilus to construct an ever growing shell, into which the creature continues to inhabit and to grow. At the very last stanza the author compares the slow growing nautilus to a human soul: “Build thee more stately mansions, oh 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!”

In discussing this poem with a high school class, I was asked, “What’s the point?” If this is about a human soul, why does he drag in a chambered nautilus? Why doesn’t he just say ‘Keep growing, soul, until you die?”’

I didn’t have a good answer then, which may be why it has come back to my mind quite often. The student was questioning the purpose of poetry itself.

“The Earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world and all who live in it; for He founded it on the seas and established it upon the waters,” (Psalm 24:1-2)

God and the soul are invisible. Nevertheless everything in creation displays the reality of God, and the labors of the nautilus give us a picture of our own growing out of smallness to the increasingly large and even limitless expanse of the kingdom of our creator God.

The metaphors in Holmes’ poem open our imagination to exotic life forms both real and imaginary: “This is the ship of pearl, which poets feign, sails the unshadowed main. . . In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings, and coral reefs lie bare,
Where cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair”. . .

To touch the reader’s imagination, to enable us to imagine something we have never seen, is to open more and more “chambers” through which we might perceive our living God.

The poet is grateful to the nautilus for opening his mind this way: “Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, child of the wandering sea.”

Thanks for your insight, Mr. Holmes, for showing us more of God’s world at work in your soul. Happy Thanksgiving!!

Love in Him,

Prue