The Coral Insect  

Toil on! toil on! ye ephemeral train,

Who build in the tossing and treacherous main; 

Toil on! for the wisdom of man ye mock, 

With your sand-based structures and domes of rock; 

Your columns the fathomless fountains lave,

And your arches spring up to the crested wave; 

Ye’re a punuy race, this to boldly rear 

A fabrick so fast, in a realm so drear. 

Ye bind the deep with your secret zone, 

The ocean is seal’d, and the surge a stone; 

Fresh wreaths from the coral pavements spring, 

Like the terraced pride of Assyria’s king; 

The turf looks green where the breakers roll’d; 

Over the whirlpool ripens the ring of gold; 

The sea-snatch’d isle is the home of men, 

And mountains exult where the wave hath been. 

But why do ye plant ‘neath the billows dark

The wrecking reef for the gallant bark? 

There are snares enough on the tented field,

‘Mid the blossoming sweets that the valleys yield; 

There are serpents to coil, ere the flowers are up, 

There’s a poison drop in man’s purest cup; 

There are foes that watch for his cradle breath, 

And why need ye sow the floods with death? 

With moldering bones the deeps are white, 

From ice-clad pole to the tropics bright, 

The mermaid hath twisted her fingers cold, 

With the mesh of the sea-boy’s curls of gold, 

The gods of the ocean have frowned to see 

The mariner’s bed in their halls of glee; 

Hath earth no graves, that ye must spread 

The boundless sea for the thronging dead? 

Ye build, ye build, but ye enter not in, 

Like the tribes of the desert devoured in their sin, 

From the land of promise ye fade and die, 

E’re its verdure gleams forth on your weary eye; 

As the kings of the cloud-crowned pyramid, 

The noteless bones in oblivion hid 

Ye slumber unmarked ‘mid the desolate main, 

While the wonder and pride of your works remain

-Mrs. Sigourney 

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