Tied up and twisted; gnarled and knotted with wrinkles;
haggardly firm and unyielding; his eyes glowing like coals,
that still glow in the ashes of ruin; untottering Ahab stood
forth in the clearness of the morn; lifting his splintered
helmet of a brow to the fair girl's forehead of heaven.
Oh, immortal infancy, and innocency of the azure!
Invisible winged creatures that frolic all round us!
Sweet childhood of air and sky! how oblivious were ye of old Ahab's
close-coiled woe! But so have I seen little Miriam and Martha,
laughing-eyed elves, heedlessly gambol around their old sire;
sporting with the circle of singed locks which grew on the marge
of that burnt-out crater of his brain.
Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle, Ahab leaned over the side
and watched how his shadow in the water sank and sank to his gaze,
the more and the more that he strove to pierce the profundity.
But the lovely aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to dispel,
for a moment, the cankerous thing in his soul. That glad,
happy air, that winsome sky, did at last stroke and caress him;
the step-mother world, so long cruel--forbidding--now threw
affectionate arms round his stubborn neck, and did seem to joyously
sob over him, as if over one, that however wilful and erring,
she could yet find it in her heart to save and to bless.
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