I turn my body from the sun

To follow the fading phantom into the deep

All collapsed

And the great shroud of the sea

Rolled

Alas! The Marquesas!

Shun the beckoning land!

Choose the open sea instead

To whatever end!

Took down to wondrous depths

Sullen

Masts are broken

Men will break

Yards are shattered

Bodies shake

Bulkheads battered - Planks are burst

This ship

Oh, ye great mysterious - Thousand leagues of blue

No one knows which mysteries are hidden

Beneath your surface

Your awful stirrings

Our boat lurches through damnation

Utter madness embraces me

Faces drawn my starvation

As we dwindle

"Look sharp, marines!"

"Dead whale or sunk boat!"

"Hunt him 'til he spouts black blood"

"And

4. Of The Monstrous Pictures Of Whales

Feel decay - Pale as clay

And all washed away

Blackest days

Arcane our way - Gone astray

And all washed

The ribs and terrors in the whale

Arched over me a dismal doom

While all God's sun-lit waves rolled by

And lift

Death to the living

Long life to the killers,

Success to sailor's wives

And greasy luck to whalers.

Crushed as the moth beneath