How many descriptive words do you know that would be suitable to use in describing it? Can you think of any comparison that will help us to see this object?

Read your description aloud, without naming the object described. The other pupils must guess what object you have described. Who has made the clearest picture?

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THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS

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,

vaulted, with an arched roof. This is the last stanza of a poem called The Chambered Nautilus. The soul of man is here compared to the little creature which year after year builds its spiral shell, and as each new part is completed moves into it, leaving its previous home unoccupied. What resemblance can you discover in this figure? Can you state the thought simply? What is meant by thine outgrown shell? Commit this stanza to memory.

Word Study. What is meant by outgrown? Put this prefix before live, look, shine, sparkle, did. Give the meanings of the words. you form. From your dictionary find other words with the prefix.

out.

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THE FORSAKEN MERMAN

COME, dear children, let us away;
Down and away below!

Now my brothers call from the bay,
Now the great winds shoreward blow,
Now the salt tides seaward flow;
Now the wild white horses play,
Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.
Children dear, let us away!
This way, this way!

Call her once before you go-
Call once yet!

In a voice that she will know:

"Margaret! Margaret!"

Children's voices should be dear
(Call once more) to a mother's ear;
Children's voices, wild with pain –
Surely she will come again!

Call her once and come away;
This way, this way!

"Mother dear, we cannot stay!

The wild white horses foam and fret."
Margaret! Margaret!

Come, dear children, come away down;
Call no more!

One last look at the white-wall'd town,

And the little gray church on the windy shore;
Then come down!

She will not come though you call all day;
Come away, come away!

Children dear, was it yesterday

We heard the sweet bells over the bay?
In the caverns where we lay,

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Through the surf and through the swell,
The far-off sound of a silver bell?
Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep,
Where the winds are all asleep;

Where the spent lights quiver and gleam,
Where the salt weed sways in the stream,
Where the sea beasts, ranged all round,
Feed in the ooze of their pasture ground;
Where the sea snakes coil and twine,
Dry their mail and bask in the brine;
Where great whales come sailing by,
Sail and sail, with unshut eye,
Round the world forever and aye?
When did music come this way?

Children dear, was it yesterday?

Children dear, was it yesterday

(Call yet once) that she went away? Once she sate with you and me,

On a red-gold throne in the heart of the sea,

5 And the youngest sate on her knee.

She comb'd its bright hair, and she tended it well,
When down swung the sound of a far-off bell.

She sigh'd, she look'd up through the clear green sea;
She said: "I must go, for my kinsfolk pray

10 In the little gray church on the shore to-day.
"Twill be Easter-time in the world-ah me!

And I lose my poor soul, Merman! here with thee."
I said: "Go up, dear heart, through the waves;

Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea caves!" 15 She smiled, she went up through the surf in the bay. Children dear, was it yesterday?

Children dear, were we long alone?

"The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan; Long prayers," I said, " in the world they say;

20 Come!" I said; and we rose through the surf in the bay. We went up the beach, by the sandy down

Where the sea stocks bloom, to the white-wall'd town; Through the narrow paved streets, where all was still, To the little gray church on the windy hill.

25 From the church came a murmur of folk at their But we stood without in the cold blowing airs.

prayers,

We climb'd on the graves, on the stones worn with rains,
And we gazed up the aisle through the small leaded panes.
She sate by the pillar; we saw her clear:
"Margaret, hist! come quick, we are here!
Dear heart," I said, "we are long alone;
The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan.”
But, ah, she gave me never a look,

For her eyes were seal'd to the holy book!
Loud prays the priest; shut stands the door.
Come away, children, call no more!

Come away, come down, call no more!

Down, down, down!

Down to the depths of the sea!

She sits at her wheel in the humming town,

Singing most joyfully.

Hark what she sings: "O joy, O joy,

For the humming street, and the child with its toy!

For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well;

For the wheel where I spun,

And the blessed light of the sun!"

And so she sings her fill,

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Singing most joyfully,

Till the spindle drops from her hand,

And the whizzing wheel stands still.

She steals to the window, and looks at the sand,
And over the sand at the sea;

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