BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
The Lee Shore,
from Moby Dick
Some chapters back, one Bulkington was spoken of, a tall,
new-landed mariner, encountered in New Bedford at the inn. When
on that shivering winter's night, the Pequod thrust her vindictive bows
into the cold malicious waves, who should I see standing at her helm
but Bulkington! I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon
the man, who in mid-winter just landed from a four years' dangerous
voyage, could so unrestingly push off again for still another
tempestuous term. The land seemed scorching to his feet.
Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories
yield no epitaphs; this six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of
Bulkington. Let me only say that it fared with him as with the
storm-tossed ship, that miserably drives along the leeward land. The
port would fain give succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is safety,
comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that's kind
to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship's
direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land,
though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and
through. With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so
doing, fights 'gainst the very winds that fain would blow her
homeward; seeks all the lashed sea's landlessness again; for refuge's
sake forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe!
Know ye, now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that
mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the
intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea;
while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on
the treacherous, slavish shore? But as in landlessness alone resides the
highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God --so, better is it to perish in
that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even
if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven
crawl to land! Terrors of the terrible! is all this agony so vain? Take
heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from
the spray of thy ocean-perishing --straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!