Oh, Starbuck! is it not hard,
that with this weary load I bear, one poor leg should have been
snatched from under me? Here, brush this old hair aside;
it blinds me, that I seem to weep. Locks so grey did never grow
but from out some ashes! But do I look very old, so very,
very old, Starbuck? I feel deadly faint, bowed, and humped,
as though I were Adam, staggering beneath the piled centuries
since Paradise. God! God! God!--crack my heart!--stave my brain!--
mockery! mockery! bitter, biting mockery of grey hairs, have I lived
enough joy to wear ye; and seem and feel thus intolerably old?
Close! stand close to me, Starbuck; let me look into a human eye;
it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze
upon God. By the green land; by the bright hearthstone! this
is the magic glass, man; I see my wife and my child in thine eye.
No, no; stay on board, on board!--lower not when I do; when branded
Ahab gives chase to Moby Dick. That hazard shall not be thine.
No, no! not with the far away home I see in that eye!"
"Oh, my Captain! my Captain! noble soul! grand old heart,
after all! why should any one give chase to that hated fish!
Away with me! let us fly these deadly waters! let us home!
Wife and child, too, are Starbuck's--wife and child of
his brotherly, sisterly, play-fellow youth; even as thine, sir,
are the wife and child of thy loving, longing, paternal old age!
Away! let us away!--this instant let me alter the course!
How cheerily, how hilariously, O my Captain, would we bowl
on our way to see old Nantucket again! I think, sir, they have
some such mild blue days, even as this, in Nantucket.
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