64 THE WHALE AND 



The Whale in Prose. The Whale in Poetry. 



Though so huge a creature, a very small part 

 of its bulk appears out of water, and that bend- 

 ing with the undulations of the waves ; nor do 

 you have so fair a view of this immense mass 

 of organized matter, as of a ship afloat in com- 

 parison to one on the stocks. To have a just 

 idea of its greatness, it should be seen on dry 

 land. As is usually the case, the observed re- 

 ality of this mammoth animal, prodigious as it 

 is, hardly comes up to the preconceived vague 

 idea of it, still less to the poetic notion of 



That sea-beast 



Leviathan, which God of all his works 

 Created hugest, that swim the ocean stream. 

 Him haply slumbering on the Norway foam, 

 The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff, 

 Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell, 

 With fixed anchor in his scaly rind, 

 Moors by his side under the lee, while night 

 . Invests the sea and wished morn delays. 



They used to tell some big " fish stories" in 

 Milton's day, and I have no doubt they had 

 something to do in his mind with the creation 

 of that image of Satan on the burning lake. 



With head uplift above the wave, and eyes 

 That sparkling blazed ; his other parts beside, 

 Prone on the flood, extended long and large, 

 Lay floating many a rood ; in bulk as huge 

 As whom the fables name of monstrous size, 

 Titanian. or earth-born, that warred on Jove : 



