The opposite of this entry was hung all
over with heathenish monstrous clubs and spears
set with teeth resembling ivory saws;
others tuft with knots of human hair;

and one was sickle-shaped, a vast segment
You gazed, what could have gone death-harvesting
with such a horrifying implement
Mixed in with these were rusty old whaling

harpoons all broken elbowed fifty years —
so like a corkscrew flung in Javan seas
and run away with by a whale, years
a restless needle of full forty feet

this corner-anchored ark rocked furiously
with cracked glass cases, dusty rarities

gable-ended Inn, condemned old craft.
large oil-painting so thoroughly defaced,
understand its unaccountable mass
shades that you almost delineate

But what most puzzled and confounded you
was a long, limber, portentous black mass
of something hovering in the centre blue,
dim, nameless yeast. A squitchy nervous tract.

—It's the Black Sea. —It's the four elements.
—It's a Hyperborean winter scene.
—a faint resemblance to a giant fish?
a Cape-Horner in a great hurricane;

half-foundered with its three dismantled masts
a whale, impaling himself upon the mast

I heard a forlorn creaking swinging sign
with a white, faint word — "The Spouter-Inn"
dilapidated wooden swinging sign
a gabled palsied leaning sharp bleak wind

these eyes are windows, this body the house.
What a pity they didn't stop up the chinks
But it's too late to make improvements now.
The verse is finished; the copestone, and the chips.

Euroclydon! pooh! What frosty night;
how Orion glitters; northern lights!
talk of oriental summer nights
Can he warm blue hands by northern lights?

Let us scrape the ice from frosted feet
and see what sort of place this "Spouter" may be.

Chief among these motives was the whale
portentious and mysterious monster roused
the undeliverable perils of the whale;
a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds,

I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote.
I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.

passengers get sea-sick—don't sleep nights—
do not enjoy themselves, as a general thing;—
I never go as a passenger or the like
And as for cook,— I never fancied broiling —

No, when I go, I go before the mast,
plumb down into the forecastle, aloft
the royal mast head spar to spar, like grass
in a May meadow. unpleasant enough.

some old hunks of sea-captain orders me?
What does indignity amount to, weighed?
Do you think Gabriel thinks less of me,
cause I obey old hunks? Who ain't a slave?

The sea-captains may order me about—
so the universal thump is passed round.

Say, you are in the country; land of lakes.
Take to there the most absent-minded of men
plunged in his deepest reveries—on his legs,
if water be in all that region.

a metaphysical artist. He desires
the dreamiest, shadiest most enchanting bit
thus tranced, though pine-tree shakes down its sighs
eye fixed upon the magic stream fore him.

Why did he need a trip to Rockaway Beach?
Why s every boys soul crazy to go to sea?
Why d Persians hold the sea holy? Why d the Greeks?
Surely this is not without meaning.

Narcissus drowns in oceans. this is key.
Now, I am in the habit of going to sea.

Some years ago— having nothing on shore
I find myself growing grim about the mouth;
whenever its November in my soul;
when I find my coffin knocking — I account

This is my substitute for pistol and ball.
I take to ship. Manhattoes, belted round
by wharves as Indian isles by coral
surround her waterward extreme down-town

where noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled
by breezes, out of sight, look at the crowds
the city dreamy Sabbath afternoon
like silent sentinels all around the town

look oer extremest limit of the land
as nigh the water as they possibly can