Crumbling is not an instant's Act — Ship-Borer

Crumbling is not an instant's Act 1
A fundamental pause
Dilapidation's processes
Are organized Decays.

'Tis first a Cobweb on the Soul 5
A Cuticle of Dust
A Borer in the Axis
An Elemental Rust-

Ruin is formal-Devil's work 9
Consecutive and slow-
Fail in an instant, no man did
Slipping-is Crash's law.
(F.1010/J.997)
[1] Crumbling:: of a ship.
[5] Cobweb:: musty accumulation.
[6] Dust:: the symptom of a ship-worm's attack.
[7] Borer:: ship-borer, a ship-worm.
[11] instant:: the ship sunk in an instant.
[12] Slipping:: into waters.

In the Teredo, or Ship-borer, the most vermiform of molluscous animals, the valves are reduced to mere appendages of the foot, at one extremity of the animal, and are restricted in their function to the operation of boring. As the ship-worm advances in the wood it lines its burrow with a thin layer of calcareous matter. ─ Lectures on the Comparative Anatomy (1843)