Herman Melville: Moby Dick

0. Introduction (continued)

"In the free element beneath me swam,
Floundered and dived, in play, in chace, in battle,
Fishes of every colour, form, and kind;
Which language cannot paint, and mariner
Had never seen; from dread Leviathan
To insect millions peopling every wave:
Gather'd in shoals immense, like floating islands,
Led by mysterious instincts through that waste
And trackless region, though on every side
Assaulted by voracious enemies,
Whales, sharks, and monsters, arm'd in front or jaw,
With swords, saws, spiral horns, or hooked fangs."
--MONTGOMERY'S WORLD BEFORE THE FLOOD.

"Io! Paean! Io! sing.
To the finny people's king.
Not a mightier whale than this
In the vast Atlantic is;
Not a fatter fish than he,
Flounders round the Polar Sea." --CHARLES LAMB'S TRIUMPH OF THE WHALE.

"In the year 1690 some persons were on a high hill observing the whales spouting and sporting with each other, when one observed: there--pointing to the sea--is a green pasture where our children's grand-children will go for bread." --OBED MACY'S HISTORY OF NANTUCKET.

"I built a cottage for Susan and myself and made a gateway in the form of a Gothic Arch, by setting up a whale's jaw bones." --HAWTHORNE'S TWICE TOLD TALES.

"She came to bespeak a monument for her first love, who had been killed by a whale in the Pacific ocean, no less than forty years ago." --IBID.

"No, Sir, 'tis a Right Whale," answered Tom; "I saw his sprout; he threw up a pair of as pretty rainbows as a Christian would wish to look at. He's a raal oil-butt, that fellow!" --COOPER'S PILOT.

"The papers were brought in, and we saw in the Berlin Gazette that whales had been introduced on the stage there." --ECKERMANN'S CONVERSATIONS WITH GOETHE.

"My God! Mr. Chace, what is the matter?" I answered, "we have been stove by a whale." --"NARRATIVE OF THE SHIPWRECK OF THE WHALE SHIP ESSEX OF NANTUCKET, WHICH WAS ATTACKED AND FINALLY DESTROYED BY A LARGE SPERM WHALE IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN." BY OWEN CHACE OF NANTUCKET, FIRST MATE OF SAID VESSEL. NEW YORK, 1821.