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/ "Speak, thou vast and venerable head," \
| muttered Ahab, "which, though |
| ungarnished with a beard, yet here and |
| there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, |
| mighty head, and tell us the secret |
| thing that is in thee. Of all divers, |
| thou has dived the deepest. That head |
| upon which the upper sun now gleams has |
| moved amid the world's foundations. |
| Where unrecorded names and navies rust, |
| and untold hopes and anchors rot; where |
| in her murderous hold this frigate |
| earth is ballasted with bones of |
| millions of the drowned; there, in that |
| awful water-land, there was thy most |
| familiar home. Thou hast been where |
| bell or diver never went; has slept by |
| many a sailer's side, where sleepless |
| mothers would give their lives to lay |
| them down. Thou saw'st the locked |
| lovers when leaping from their flaming |
| ship; heart to heart they sank beneath |
| the exulting wave; true to each other, |
| when heaven seemed false to them. Thou |
| saw'st the murdered mate when tossed by |
| pirates from the midnight deck; for |
| hours he fell into the deeper midnight |
| of the insatiate maw; and his murderers |
| still sailed on unharmed -- while swift |
| lightnings shivered the neighboring |
| ship that would have borne a righteous |
| husband to outstretched, longing arms. |
| O head! thou has seen enough to split |
| the planets and make an infidel of |
| Abraham, and not one syllable is |
| thine!" |
| |
\ -- H. Melville, "Moby Dick" /
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Created with love by
Addison Whitney