The Symphony — Moby-Dick

A clear steel-blue day merges air and sea in azure; feminine air glides small birds while masculine sea heaves Samson swells, and untottering Ahab lifts his splintered helmet brow to heaven's fair forehead while heedless elves gambol around his burnt-out crater brain.

Leaning over the side he watches his shadow sink; lovely aromas dispel the cankerous thing briefly, the step-mother world throws affectionate arms around his neck, and from beneath his slouched hat he drops a tear into the sea whose wealth exceeds all the Pacific. Starbuck draws near hearing measureless sobbing from serenity's center without touching him.

Ahab remembers striking his first whale at eighteen forty years ago, forsaken land, masoned captain's exclusiveness, young wife widowed when he married her, demon chases, asks Starbuck if he looks very old, begs him stand close so a human eye shows wife and child better than sea or sky, yet orders him stay aboard when branded Ahab gives chase to Moby Dick.

Starbuck pleads fly deadly waters, head for Nantucket mild days, sees boy on the hill; Ahab turns blighted like a fruit tree casting a cindered apple, names a cozening hidden lord pushing against natural lovings, asks Is Ahab Ahab and who lifts this arm, cites Fate as handspike on the windlass; Starbuck blanches and steals away while Ahab sees Fedallah's two fixed eyes reflected in the water.