120 COKAL REEFS. 



floated beautiful fish, radiant with metallic greens 

 or crimsons, or fantastically banded with black and 

 yellow stripes. Patches of clear white sand were 

 seen here and there for the floor, with dark hollows 

 and recesses beneath overhanging ledges. All 

 these, seen through the clear crystal water, the 

 ripple of which gave motion and a quick play of 

 light and shadow to the whole, formed a scene of 

 the rarest beauty, and left nothing to be desired by 

 the eye, either in elegance of form or brilliancy and 

 harmony of colouring." Such is the wonderful 

 masonry of polyps. 



" Sight could not trace their evanescent changes, 

 Nor comprehend their motions ; till minute 

 And curious observation caught the clue 

 To this live labyrinth, where every one, 

 By instinct taught, perform'd its little task, 

 To build its dwelling and its sepulchre 

 Trom its own essence exquisitely modell'd ; 

 There breed and die, and leave a progeny 

 Still multiplied beyond the reach of numbers, 

 To frame new cells and tombs : then breed and die, 

 As all their ancestors had done, and rest 

 Hermetically sealed, each on its shrine 

 A statue in this temple of oblivion ! 

 Millions of millions, thus from age to age, 

 With simplest skill and toil unweariable, 

 No moment and no movement unimproved, 

 Laid line on line, on terrace terrace spread, 

 To swell the heightening, brightening, gradual mount 

 By marvellous structure, 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." 



