by Fay Picardi
As many of you already know, The Pieces of Eight has one member who is both an established poet and an aspiring artist. That member is me, Fay Picardi. I feel very honored to be a member of this group of creative, talented, and supportive women. And now the time has come that I must venture forth to do my first post.
Here goes!
For years I have been fascinated by the Chambered Nautilus or nautilus pompilius (I had to look that one up). My first introduction to this mollusk was in my English class when I was a Junior in high school. The poem was The Chambered Nautilus by Oliver Wendell Holmes. During my quite extensive stint as an American Literature teacher, I found and used as a prop for explaining the imagery in this poem to my students. It was a center cut pearl shell left somewhere in the world by a nautilus, beautiful in its iridescence. I would have it still, decades later, if it had not cracked and I had not thrown it away, promising myself I would buy another. As with many things we try to duplicate, I was never able to find one that was a perfect replacement. For years now I have been treasuring instead a tear-out from a magazine which looks as close to the original as I have been able to find, even though it does not have the tiny passageways by which the nautilus moved from chamber to chamber.
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(I usually have hung it sideways with the words "evolved thinking" vertical instead of horizontal.) With the above photo's image burnt into my mind and the inspiration of the last verse of Holme's poem, The Chambered Nautilus, which I post below, I decided I must try to create a nautilus of my own. I must try to capture the feel of the movement from chamber to chamber and the final hallelujah the last line. Here's my effort! I have made changes from my original plan. I did not print the words of the poem on the ridges of the shell. I did not make the ridges black. I was not able to make each section a wholly independent work of art. But I am very satisfied with the result. I do believe there is a hallelujah in there somewhere!  The Chambered Nautilus |
This is the ship of pearl, which,
poets feign,
Sails the
unshadowed main,—
The venturous
bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its
purpled 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;
Wrecked is the
ship of pearl!
And every
chambered cell,
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!
Year after year beheld the silent
toil
That spread his
lustrous coil;
Still, as the
spiral grew,
He left the past year’s dwelling
for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining
archway through,
Built up its
idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home,
and knew the old no more.
Thanks for the heavenly message
brought by thee,
Child of the
wandering sea,
Cast from her
lap, forlorn!
From thy dead lips a clearer note
is born
Than ever Triton blew from
wreathèd horn!
While on mine
ear it rings,
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 sea!
Bravo, Fay!
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