Moby Dick is not only novel but as well a book of poetry. Reading the novel takes times and you have to reread the words aloud and find the hidden rhymes. “Good poetry is not all about lush gorgeous words. It’s about creating an emblematic and surprising scene that opens up new worlds” (Philbrick 73).

 

 

            “The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of your must be cold, fro there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable anymore. But, if like Queequeg and me in the bed, the tip of your nose or the crown of your head be slightly chilled, why, indeed, in the general consciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm… For the height of this ort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air. Then there you lie like the one warm spark in the heart of an artic crystal” (Melville 580).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The ribs and terrors in the whale”

By Herman Melville

 

The ribs and terrors in the whale,

   Arched over me a dismal gloom,

While all God’s sun-lit waves rolled by,

   And left me deepening down to doom.

 

I saw the opening maw of hell,

   With endless pains and sorrows there;

Which none but they that feel can tell—

   Oh, I was plunging to despair.

 

In black distress, I called my God,

   When I could scarce believe him mine,

He bowed his ear to my complaints—

   No more the whale did me confine.

 

With speed he flew to my relief,

   As on a radiant dolphin borne;

Awful, yet bright, as lightening shone

   The face of my Deliverer God.

 

My song for ever shall record

   That terrible, that joyful hour;

I give the glory to my God,

   His all the mercy and the power.