LEAVE THY LOW VAULTED PAST

What does "Build thee more stately mansions" mean?

Oliver Wendell Holmes (the poet, not the Supreme Court Justice, who was his son) wrote a poem entitled "The Chambered Nautilus." The quote is from the final stanza:

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!

As the nautilus grows, it secretes the nacreous material which forms its shell, and creates a new chamber to hold its growing body. The result is the spiral shell which one can see here in cross-section.



Holmes is using the shell of the nautilus as a metaphor for spiritual growth. "Leave thy low vaulted past" means to that one abandons one's less enlightened views and habits as one grows spiritually--or at least that one should leave them behind. Holmes enjoins the spiritual seeker to leave them behind.