And yet, I've sometimes thought my brain was very calm--
frozen calm, this old skull cracks so, like a glass in which
the contents turned to ice, and shiver it. And still this hair
is growing now; this moment growing, and heat must breed it;
but no, it's like that sort of common grass that will grow anywhere,
between the earthy clefts of Greenland ice or in Vesuvius lava.
How the wild winds blow it; they whip it about me as the torn
shreds of split sails lash the tossed ship they cling to.
A vile wind that has no doubt blown ere this through prison corridors
and cells, and wards of hospitals, and ventilated them, and now comes
blowing hither as innocent as fleeces. Out upon it!--it's tainted.
Were I the wind, I'd blow no more on such a wicked, miserable world.
I'd crawl somewhere to a cave, and slink there. And yet,
'tis a noble and heroic thing, the wind! who ever conquered it?
In every fight it has the last and bitterest blow. Run tilting
at it, and you but run through it. Ha! a coward wind that strikes
stark naked men, but will not stand to receive a single blow.
Even Ahab is a braver thing--a nobler thing than that.
Would now the wind but had a body; but all the things that most
exasperate and outrage mortal man, all these things are bodiless,
but only bodiless as objects, not as agents.
Pages:
877
878
879
880
881
882
883
884
885
886
887
888
889
890
891
892
893
894
895
896
897
898
899
900
901