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.

Now having day, and still another night
It was a dubious-dark and dismal night,
gloom towards the north with darkness towards the night,
dear Ishmael, be sure to inquire the price

too jolly the red windows of "Fish Inn",
there came such rays, to melt ice inches hard,
asphaltic pavement,— Too jolly, again
I followed streets that took me waterward

the cheapest, dreary streets! blocks of black
a smoky light proceeding from a door
which stood invitingly a careless look,
I stumble over an ash-box in the porch.

—this, then, must needs be the sign of "The Trap".
a negro church; I back out of "The Trap"

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