SHIPWRECK DIARIES

The ship staggered under a thunderous shock
that shook us asunder, as if she had struck and crashed on a rock; for the huge sea smote every soul from the decks of The Falcon but one; all of them, all but the man that was lash'd to the helm had gone."[11. 106-9"]

Tennyson - The Wreck

Monday, October 16, 2006

The Sea


"There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath; like those fabled undulations of the Ephesian sod over the buried Evangelist St. John. And meet it is, that over these sea-pastures, wide-rolling watery prairies and Potter's Fields of all four continents, the waves should rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly; for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so by their restlessness."

Herman Melville
Moby Dick --Chapter 111 (The Pacific)