In the first stanza, the speaker describes the nautilus as a “ship of pearl” (Line 1), something that may not be realistic, but is rather an illusion created by “poets” (Line 1) who imagine the cephalopod as a nef (See: Background). In the poet’s vision, this ship navigates clear, “unshadowed” (Line 2) waters. The nautilus’s tentacles are described as “purpled wings” (Line 4), which catch “the sweet summer wind” (Line 4) like the sails of a ship. The ocean waters the nautilus lives in are magical and “enchanted” (Line 5). In them, there are “Siren[s]” (Line 5) and “sea-maids […] [with] streaming hair” (Line 7). There is a slight hint of trouble in the idea that the song of the siren might lure the nautilus to the “coral reefs [that] lie bare” (Line 6) where the “cold sea-maids” (Line 7) hint that its death awaits.

That the nautilus has been successfully lured to its death is expanded on in the next stanza. The “living gauze no more unrfurl[s]” (Line 8) and the nautilus is described as “[w]recked” (Line 9). The shell has been torn apart and now “its sunless crypt [is] unsealed” (Line 14), showing the “irised ceiling” (Line 14) of the nacre and the multiple “chambered cell[s]” (Line 10).