Home / News Author Index Title Index Category Index Search Your Bookshelf |
Herman Melville: Moby DickCHAPTER 7: The Chapel. (continued)But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope. It needs scarcely to be told, with what feelings, on the eve of a Nantucket voyage, I regarded those marble tablets, and by the murky light of that darkened, doleful day read the fate of the whalemen who had gone before me. Yes, Ishmael, the same fate may be thine. But somehow I grew merry again. Delightful inducements to embark, fine chance for promotion, it seems--aye, a stove boat will make me an immortal by brevet. Yes, there is death in this business of whaling--a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what then? Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me. And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a stove boat and stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove himself cannot. This is page 48 of 599. [Mark this Page] Mark any page to add this title to Your Bookshelf. (0 / 10 books on shelf) Buy a copy of Moby Dick at Amazon.com
Customize text appearance: |
(c) 2003-2012 LiteraturePage.com and Michael Moncur.
All rights
reserved.
For information about public domain texts appearing here, read the copyright information and disclaimer. |