It was not a great while after the affair of the pipe, that one morning shortly after breakfast, Ahab, as was his wont, ascended the cabin-gangway to the deck. There most sea-captains u...

"Though He slay me, yet will I… Shall hearts that beat no base ret… In youth’s magnanimous years - Ignoble hold it, if discreet When interest tames to fears;

If I had been astonished at first catching a glimpse of so outlandish an individual as Queequeg circulating among the polite society of a civilized town, that astonishment soon departed...

All dripping in tangles green, Cast up by a lonely sea If purer for that, O Weed, Bitterer, too, are ye?

Going to it, by the usual way, is like stealing from a heated plain into some cool, deep glen, shady among harboring hills. Sick with the din and soiled with the mud of Fleet Street—whe...

(October, 1864) Shoe the steed with silver That bore him to the fray, When he heard the guns at dawning– Miles away;

June, 1865 Armies he’s seen—the herds of war, But never such swarms of men As now in the Nineveh of the Nort… How mad the Rebellion then!

“Few of us doubt, gentlemen, that human life on this earth is but a state of probation; which among other things implies, that here below, we mortals have only to do with things provisi...

Care is all stuff:— Puff! Puff! To puff is enough:— Puff! Puff More musky than snuff,

After long wars when comes release Not olive wands proclaiming peace Can import dearer share Than stems of Herba Santa hazed In autumn’s Indian air.

As Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in this business of whaling; and as this business of whaling has somehow come to be regarded among landsmen as a rather unpoetical and disreput...

Did all the lets and bars appear To every just or larger end, Whence should come the trust and c… Youth must its ignorant impulse le… Age finds place in the rear.

Sailors there are of the gentlest… Yet strong, like every goodly thin… The discipline of arms refines, And the wave gives tempering. The damasked blade its beam can fl…

I AM a rather elderly man. The nature of my avocations for the last thirty years has brought me into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting and somewhat singular...

It was during the more pleasant weather, that in due rotation with the other seamen my first mast-head came round. In most American whalemen the mast-heads are manned almost simultaneou...