The Chambered Nautilus

“The Chambered Nautilus” is a rhymed and metered poem of five seven-lined stanzas, written by American poet Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. It first appeared in the February 1858 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, a magazine of arts and letters, which Holmes helped to establish the year before with other prominent authors of the mid-19th century. The poem is an ode to the sea creature of its title. The chambered nautilus is a cephalopod that houses itself in a beautiful shell, which Holmes uses as a metaphor to discuss human spirituality, mortality, and mental growth. The poem was published in The Atlantic’s “Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table” series which came out of Holmes’s personal conversations with other Boston intellectuals. These anecdotes, essays, and poems were later published in a separate book of the same name in late 1858. The poem also later appeared in Holmes’s collected works and is widely anthologized in textbooks. Throughout his long career, Holmes was a medical doctor, professor, scientist, essayist, philosopher, and humorist, while also writing poems and novels. His works showed his interest in many varied subjects. “The Chambered Novelist” is one of his most popular and critically acclaimed poems.