140 POPULAll HISTORY OF THE AQUARIUM. 



Laid line on line, on terrace ten-ace spread. 



To swell the heightening, brightening, gradual mound 



By marvellous structm-e climbing towards the day. 



Each wrought alone, yet all together wrought ; 



Unconscious, not unworthy instruments. 



By which a hand Invisible was rearing 



A new creation in the secret deep. 



Omnipotence wrought in them, with them, by them ; 



Thus what Omnipotence alone could do, 



"Worms did. . . . 



" Atom by atom, thus the burden grew ; 

 Even like an infant in the womb ; till Time 

 Delivered ocean of that monstrous birth, 

 A Coral Island, stretching east and west, 

 In God's own language, to its parent saying, — 

 * Thus far, no farther, shalt thou go ; and here 

 Shall thy proud waves be stayed.' A point at first, 

 It peer'd above those waves ; a point so small, 

 I first perceived it, fix'd where all was floating ; 

 And when a bubble cross'd it, the blue film 

 Expanded like a sky above the speck ; 

 That speck became a hand-breadth ; day and night 

 It spread, accumulated, and ere long 

 Presented to my view a dazzling plain, 

 White as the moon amid the sapphire sea ; 

 Bare at low -water, and as still as death ; 

 But when the tide came gurgling o'er the surface, 

 'T was like a resurrection from the dead ; 

 From graves innumerable, punctures fine. 

 In the close Coral, capillary swarms 



