“Have Mercy”
Steve Earle
1955- American

He was standing on the corner
A hundred-dollar bill in his hand
Said, "I could feed a lot of these people with this
But that ain't the business at hand"
Ain't but one reason for a white boy to be
Over on this side of town
He gave that money to the man and he
Bought a little mercy for now

Have mercy on me
I'm a sinner, Lord, can't you see?
Have mercy on me

Old Joe don't know how it got started
Guess it was the fire in her eyes
He loved his wife and children
And he wasn't into telling all these lies
But she gave herself so freely
In that room at the top of the stairs
He'd go to her in hopes he'd
Find a little mercy there

Have mercy on me
I'm a sinner, Lord, can't you see?
Have mercy on me

Tears are made to fall, hearts made to break
Sometimes it feels like they just want to know how much you can take

She was all alone that evening
What was she thinking about?
Her mind was made up and
I guess it was the only way out
There's a pistol in a pawn shop window
Made of cold blue steel
She took it home to find out
How warm a little mercy could feel

Have mercy on me
I'm a sinner, Lord, can't you see?
Have mercy on me

God knows that mercy ain't free
Have mercy on me

Quotations from *Moby-Dick; or, The Whale*, 11 of 22
Herman Melville
1819-1891 American

As the three boats lay there on that gently rolling sea, gazing down into its eternal blue noon; and as not a single groan or cry of any sort, nay, not so much as a ripple or a bubble came up from its depths; what landsman would have thought, that beneath all that silence and placidity, the utmost monster of the seas was writhing and wrenching in agony!
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

His eyes, or rather the places where his eyes had been, were beheld. As strange misgrown masses gather in the knot-holes of the noblest oaks when prostrate, so from the points which the whale's eyes had once occupied, now protruded blind bulbs, horribly pitiable to see. But pity there was none. For all his old age, and his one arm, and his blind eyes, he must die the death and be murdered, in order to light the gay bridals and other merry-makings of men, and also to illuminate the solemn churches that preach unconditional inoffensiveness by all to all.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

The whale now spouting thick blood, with swift fury blindly darted at the craft, bespattering them and their glorying crews all over with showers of gore, capsizing Flask's boat and marring the bows. It was his death stroke. For, by this time, so spent was he by loss of blood, that he helplessly rolled away from the wreck he had made; lay panting on his side, impotently flapped with his stumped fin, then over and over slowly revolved like a waning world; turned up the white secrets of his belly; lay like a log, and died. It was most piteous, that last expiring spout.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

The gallant Perseus, a son of Jupiter, was the first whaleman; and to the eternal honor of our calling be it said, that the first whale attacked by our brotherhood was not killed with any sordid intent. Those were the knightly days of our profession, when we only bore arms to succor the distressed, and not to fill men's lamp-feeders. Every one knows the fine story of Perseus and Andromeda; how the lovely Andromeda, the daughter of a king, was tied to a rock on the sea-coast, and as Leviathan was in the very act of carrying her off, Perseus, the prince of whalemen, intrepidly advancing, harpooned the monster, and delivered and married the maid. It was an admirable artistic exploit, rarely achieved by the best harpooneers of the present day; inasmuch as this Leviathan was slain at the very first dart. And let no man doubt this Arkite story; for in the ancient Joppa, now Jaffa, on the Syrian coast, in one of the Pagan temples, there stood for many ages the vast skeleton of a whale, which the city's legends and all the inhabitants asserted to be the identical bones of the monster that Perseus slew. When the Romans took Joppa, the same skeleton was carried to Italy in triumph. What seems most singular and suggestively important in this story, is this: it was from Joppa that Jonah set sail.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Whether to admit Hercules among us or not, concerning this I long remained dubious: for though according to the Greek mythologies, that antique Crockett and Kit Carson -- that brawny doer of rejoicing good deeds, was swallowed down and thrown up by a whale; still, whether that strictly makes a whaleman of him, that might be mooted.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

In man, breathing is incessantly going on -- one breath only serving for two or three pulsations; so that whatever other business he has to attend to, waking or sleeping, breathe he must, or die he will. But the Sperm Whale only breathes about one seventh or Sunday of his time.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Sure it is, nevertheless, that the Sperm Whale has no proper olfactories. But what does he want of them? No roses, no violets, no Cologne-water in the sea.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Seldom have I known any profound being that had anything to say to this world, unless forced to stammer out something by way of getting a living.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

I account him no common, shallow being, inasmuch as it is an undisputed fact that he is never found on soundings, or near shores; all other whales sometimes are. He is both ponderous and profound.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Doubts of all things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them both with equal eye.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

In no living thing are the lines of beauty more exquisitely defined than in the crescentic borders of these flukes.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

But as if this vast local power in the tendinous tail were not enough, the whole bulk of the Leviathan is knit over with a warp and woof of muscular fibres and filaments, which passing on either side the loins and running down into the flukes, insensibly blend with them, and largely contribute to their might; so that in the tail the confluent measureless force of the whole whale seems concentrated to a point. Could annihilation occur to matter, this were the thing to do it.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

And whatever they may reveal of the divine love in the Son, the soft, curled, hermaphroditical Italian pictures, in which his idea has been most successfully embodied; these pictures, so destitute as they are of all brawniness, hint nothing of any power, but the mere negative, feminine one of submission and endurance, which on all hands it is conceded, form the peculiar practical virtues of his teachings.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

It is a little significant, that while one sperm whale only fights another sperm whale with his head and jaw, nevertheless, in his conflicts with man, he chiefly and contemptuously uses his tail.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

On more accounts than one, a pity it is that the whale does not possess this prehensile virtue in his tail; for I have heard of yet another elephant, that when wounded in the fight, curved round his trunk and extracted the dart.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Stealing unawares upon the whale in the fancied security of the middle of solitary seas, you find him unbent from the vast corpulence of his dignity, and kitten-like, he plays on the ocean as if it were a hearth. But still you see his power in his play. The broad palms of his tail are flirted high into the air; then smiting the surface, the thunderous concussion resounds for miles. You would almost think a great gun had been discharged; and if you noticed the light wreath of vapor from the spiracle at his other extremity, you would think that that was the smoke from the touch-hole.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

As in the ordinary floating posture of the Leviathan the flukes lie considerably below the level of his back, they are then completely out of sight beneath the surface; but when he is about to plunge into the deeps, his entire flukes with at least thirty feet of his body are tossed erect in the air, and so remain vibrating a moment, till they downwards shoot out of view. Excepting the sublime breach -- somewhere else to be described -- this peaking of the whale's flukes is perhaps the grandest sight to be seen in all animated nature. Out of the bottomless profundities the gigantic tail seems spasmodically snatching at the highest heaven. So in dreams, have I seen majestic Satan thrusting forth his tormented colossal claw from the flame Baltic of Hell.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

The most direful blow from the elephant's trunk were as the playful tap of a fan, compared with the measureless crush and crash of the sperm whale's ponderous flukes.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“An Introduction to Some Poems”
William Stafford
1914-1993 American

Look: no one ever promised for sure
that we would sing. We have decided
to moan. In a strange dance that
we don't understand till we do it, we
have to carry on.

Just as in sleep you have to dream
the exact dream to round out your life,
so we have to live that dream into stories
and hold them close at you, close at the
edge we share, to be right.

We find it an awful thing to meet people,
serious or not, who have turned into vacant
effective people, so far lost that they
won't believe their own feelings
enough to follow them out.

The authentic is a line from one thing
along to the next; it interests us.
Strangely, it relates to what works,
but is not quite the same. It never
swerves for revenge,

Or profit, or fame: it holds
together something more than the world,
this line. And we are your wavery
efforts at following it. Are you coming?
Good: now it is time.

Quotations from *Moby-Dick; or, The Whale*, 12 of 22
Herman Melville
1819-1891 American

Dissect him how I may, then, I but go skin deep; I know him not, and never will. But if I know not even the tail of this whale, how understand his head? much more, how comprehend his face, when face he has none? Thou shalt see my back parts, my tail, he seems to say, but my face shall not be seen. But I cannot completely make out his back parts; and hint what he will about his face, I say again he has no face.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

It seems a significant provision of nature, that such treasures, by the very formation of the land, should at least bear the appearance, however ineffectual, of being guarded from the all-grasping western world.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Had these Leviathans been but a flock of simple sheep, pursued over the pasture by three fierce wolves, they could not possibly have evinced such excessive dismay. But this occasional timidity is characteristic of almost all herding creatures. Though banding together in tens of thousands, the lion-maned buffaloes of the West have fled before a solitary horseman. Witness, too, all human beings, how when herded together in the sheepfold of a theatre's pit, they will, at the slightest alarm of fire, rush helter-skelter for the outlets, crowding, trampling, jamming, and remorselessly dashing each other to death. Best, therefore, withhold any amazement at the strangely gallied whales before us, for there is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Like household dogs they came snuffling round us, right up to our gunwales, and touching them; till it almost seemed that some spell had suddenly domesticated them. Queequeg patted their foreheads; Starbuck scratched their backs with his lance; but fearful of the consequences, for the time refrained from darting it.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm; and while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Do what the Bashaw will, he cannot keep the most notorious Lothario out of his bed; for, alas! all fish bed in common. As ashore, the ladies often cause the most terrible duels among their rival admirers; just so with the whales, who sometimes come to deadly battle, and all for love. They fence with their long lower jaws, sometimes locking them together, and so striving for the supremacy like elks that warringly interweave their antlers.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Almost universally, a lone whale -- as a solitary Leviathan is called -- proves an ancient one. Like venerable moss-bearded Daniel Boone, he will have no one near him but Nature herself.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

The young males, or forty-barrel-bulls, as they call them, are by far the most pugnacious of all Leviathans, and proverbially the most dangerous to encounter; excepting those wondrous grey-headed, grizzled whales, sometimes met, and these will fight you like grim fiends exasperated by a penal gout.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Another point of difference between the male and female schools is still more characteristic of the sexes. Say you strike a Forty-barrel-bull -- poor devil! all his comrades quit him. But strike a member of the harem school, and her companions swim around her with every token of concern, sometimes lingering so near her and so long, as themselves to fall a prey.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

These two laws touching Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish, I say, will, on reflection, be found the fundamentals of all human jurisprudence.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

What is the Archbishop of Savesoul's income of £100,000 seized from the scant bread and cheese of hundreds of thousands of broken-backed laborers (all sure of heaven without any of Savesoul's help) what is that globular 100,000 but a Fast-Fish?
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

What was Poland to the Czar? What Greece to the Turk? What India to England? What at last will Mexico be to the United States? All Loose-Fish.

What are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the World but Loose-Fish? What all men's minds and opinions but Loose-Fish? What is the principle of religious belief in them but a Loose-Fish? What to the ostentatious smuggling verbalists are the thoughts of thinkers but Loose-Fish? What is the great globe itself but a Loose-Fish? And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too?
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Latin from the books of the Laws of England, which taken along with the context, means, that of all whales captured by anybody on the coast of that land, the King, as Honorary Grand Harpooneer, must have the head, and the Queen be respectfully presented with the tail. A division which, in the whale, is much like halving an apple; there is no intermediate remainder.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

But by inference it seems to me that the sturgeon must be divided in the same way as the whale, the King receiving the highly dense and elastic head peculiar to that fish, which, symbolically regarded, may possibly be humorously grounded upon some presumed congeniality. And thus there seems a reason in all things, even in law.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

So, though in the clear air of day, suspended against a blue-veined neck, the pure-watered diamond drop will healthful glow; yet, when the cunning jeweller would show you the diamond in its most impressive lustre, he lays it against a gloomy ground, and then lights it up, not by the sun, but by some unnatural gases. Then come out those fiery effulgences, infernally superb; then the evil-blazing diamond, once the divinest symbol of the crystal skies, looks like some crown-jewel stolen from the King of Hell.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

The substance was, Never jump from a boat, Pip, except -- but all the rest was indefinite, as the soundest advice ever is. Now, in general, Stick to the boat, is your true motto in whaling; but cases will sometimes happen when Leap from the boat, is still better.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Hereby perhaps Stubb indirectly hinted, that though man loved his fellow, yet man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Now, in calm weather, to swim in the open ocean is as easy to the practised swimmer as to ride in a spring-carriage ashore. But the awful lonesomeness is intolerable.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

So man's insanity is heaven's sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

I have perceived that in all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fire-side, the country.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Spite of reason, it is hard to keep yourself from eating it. I confess, that once I stole behind the foremast to try it. It tasted something as I should conceive a royal cutlet from the thigh of Louis le Gros might have tasted, supposing him to have been killed the first day after the venison season, and that particular venison season contemporary with an unusually fine vintage of the vineyards of Champagne.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

The gaff is something like a boat-hook. With his gaff, the gaffman hooks on to a sheet of blubber, and strives to hold it from slipping, as the ship pitches and lurches about. Meanwhile, the spade-man stands on the sheet itself, perpendicularly chopping it into the portable horse-pieces. This spade is sharp as hone can make it; the spademan's feet are shoeless; the thing he stands on will sometimes irresistibly slide away from him, like a sledge. If he cuts off one of his own toes, or one of his assistants', would you be very much astonished? Toes are scarce among veteran blubber-room men.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Besides her hoisted boats, an American whaler is outwardly distinguished by her try-works. She presents the curious anomaly of the most solid masonry joining with oak and hemp in constituting the completed ship. It is as if from the open field a brick-kiln were transported to her planks.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

It smells like the left wing of the day of judgment; it is an argument for the pit.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

As they narrated to each other their unholy adventures, their tales of terror told in words of mirth; as their uncivilized laughter forked upwards out of them, like the flames from the furnace; as to and fro, in their front, the harpooneers wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged forks and dippers; as the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the ship groaned and dived, and yet steadfastly shot her red hell further and further into the blackness of the sea and the night, and scornfully champed the white bone in her mouth, and viciously spat round her on all sides; then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander's soul.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Uppermost was the impression, that whatever swift, rushing thing I stood on was not so much bound to any haven ahead as rushing from all havens astern.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man!
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Quotations from *Moby-Dick; or, The Whale*, 13 of 22
Herman Melville
1819-1891 American

The glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lamp -- all others but liars!
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

The sun hides not the ocean, which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of this earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true -- not true, or undeveloped. With books the same. The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon's, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe. “All is vanity”. ALL. This wilful world hath not got hold of unchristian Solomon's wisdom yet. But he who dodges hospitals and jails, and walks fast crossing grave-yards, and would rather talk of operas than hell; calls Cowper, Young, Pascal, Rousseau, poor devils all of sick men; and throughout a care-free lifetime swears by Rabelais as passing wise, and therefore jolly; -- not that man is fitted to sit down on tomb-stones, and break the green damp mould with unfathomably wondrous Solomon.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Yes; and many is the time, when, after the severest uninterrupted labors, which know no night; continuing straight through for ninety-six hours; when from the boat, where they have swelled their wrists with all day rowing on the Line, -- they only step to the deck to carry vast chains, and heave the heavy windlass, and cut and slash, yea, and in their very sweatings to be smoked and burned anew by the combined fires of the equatorial sun and the equatorial try-works; when, on the heel of all this, they have finally bestirred themselves to cleanse the ship, and make a spotless dairy room of it; many is the time the poor fellows, just buttoning the necks of their clean frocks, are startled by the cry of “There she blows!” and away they fly to fight another whale, and go through the whole weary thing again. Oh! my friends, but this is man-killing! Yet this is life.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Oh! the metempsychosis! Oh! Pythagoras, that in bright Greece, two thousand years ago, did die, so good, so wise, so mild; I sailed with thee along the Peruvian coast last voyage -- and, foolish as I am, taught thee, a green simple boy, how to splice a rope!
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

And some certain significance lurks in all things, else all things are little worth, and the round world itself but an empty cipher, except to sell by the cartload, as they do hills about Boston, to fill up some morass in the Milky Way.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“There's something ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers, and all other grand and lofty things; look here, -- three peaks as proud as Lucifer.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Born in throes, 't is fit that man should live in pains and die in pangs! So be it, then! Here's stout stuff for woe to work on. So be it, then.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Yet, oh, the great sun is no fixture; and if, at midnight, we would fain snatch some sweet solace from him, we gaze for him in vain!”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Book! you lie there; the fact is, you books must know your places. You'll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Leo, a roaring Lion, lies in the path -- he gives a few fierce bites and surly dabs with his paw; we escape, and hail Virgo, the Virgin! that's our first love; we marry and think to be happy for aye, when pop comes Libra, or the Scales -- happiness weighed and found wanting; and while we are very sad about that, Lord! how we suddenly jump, as Scorpio, or the Scorpion, stings us in rear.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“And to wind up with Pisces, or the Fishes, we sleep. There's a sermon now, writ in high heaven, and the sun goes through it every year, and yet comes out of it all alive and hearty. Jollily he, aloft there, wheels through toil and trouble.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Ship, ahoy! Hast seen the White Whale?”

So cried Ahab, once more hailing a ship showing English colors, bearing down under the stern. Trumpet to mouth, the old man was standing in his hoisted quarter-boat, his ivory leg plainly revealed to the stranger captain, who was carelessly reclining in his own boat's bow. He was a darkly-tanned, burly, good-natured, fine-looking man, of sixty or thereabouts, dressed in a spacious roundabout, that hung round him in festoons of blue pilot-cloth; and one empty arm of this jacket streamed behind him like the broidered arm of a huzzar's surcoat.

“Hast seen the White Whale?”

“See you this?” and withdrawing it from the fold that had hidden it, he held up a white arm of sperm whale bone, terminating in a wooden head like a mallet.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“I was ignorant of the White Whale at that time. Well, one day we lowered for a pod of four or five whales, and my boat fastened to one of them; a regular circus horse he was, too, that went milling and milling round so, that my boat's crew could only trim dish, by sitting all their sterns on the outer gunwale. Presently up breaches from the bottom of the sea a bouncing great whale, with a milky-white head and hump, all crows' feet and wrinkles.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“I didn't then know what whale it was that had served me such a trick, till some time afterwards, when coming back to the Line, we heard about Moby Dick -- as some call him -- and then I knew it was he.”

“Did'st thou cross his wake again?”

“Twice.”

“But could not fasten?”

“Didn't want to try to: ain't one limb enough? What should I do without this other arm? And I'm thinking Moby Dick doesn't bite so much as he swallows.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“No more White Whales for me; I've lowered for him once, and that has satisfied me. There would be great glory in killing him, I know that; and there is a ship-load of precious sperm in him, but, hark ye, he's best let alone; don't you think so, Captain?” -- glancing at the ivory leg.

“He is. But he will still be hunted, for all that. What is best let alone, that accursed thing is not always what least allures.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

They were all trumps—every soul on board. A short life to them, and a jolly death.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

For, as a general thing, the English merchant-ship scrimps her crew; but not so the English whaler.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

During my researches in the leviathanic histories, I stumbled upon an ancient Dutch volume, which, by the musty whaling smell of it, I knew must be about whalers.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

For, say they, when cruising in an empty ship, if you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Wherefore all these ceaseless toilings?
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“The Leopard and the Deer”
Chapter 19 of *The Book of Lies, Which Is Also Falsely Called Breaks, The Wanderings or Falsifications of the One Thought of Frater Perdurabo, Which Thought Is Itself Untrue, A Reprint with an additional commentary to each chapter*
Aleister Crowley
1875-1947 English

The spots of the leopard are the sunlight in the glade; pursue thou the deer stealthily at thy pleasure.

The dappling of the deer is the sunlight in the glade; concealed from the leopard do thou feed at thy pleasure.

Resemble all that surroundeth thee; yet be Thyself—and take thy pleasure among the Living.

This is that which is written—Lurk!—in The Book of The Law.

Commentary

19 is the last Trump, “The Sun”, which is the representative of God in the Macrocosm, as the Phallus is in the Microcosm.

There is a certain universality and adaptability among its secret powers. The chapter is taken from Rudyard Kipling's “Just So Stories”.

The Master urges his disciples to a certain holy stealth, a concealment of the real purpose of their lives; in this way making the best of both worlds. This counsels a course of action hardly distinguishable from hypocrisy; but the distinction is obvious to any clear thinker, though not altogether so to Frater P.

“Hot, hot sex.”
Steff

The space between my legs smells of sex,
Hot and sticky telling stories of a long goodnight
With a man I already miss.
My thighs, no longer coltish have grown thicker,
The enticing gap of youth that once crowned my innocence
Has filled out with gained weight.
I was once slim, scrawny almost,
My breasts were small, nipples protruding beneath a bra
I did not yet need but wore to enhance what little I had in a
Whore’s game.
Now I am what some may call festively plump,
My sexuality more overt and obvious
Now that my breasts meet in beautiful round circles in corsets
And my hips flare beneath hooped skirts and netting.
I do not call myself plump,
Instead I revel in my pleasant pot belly,
I push it out as I walk and do not breathe in to hide it.
I am proud, the dimples in my buttocks
Remember grabbing hands and carpet burns
That love gave me, something I never got when
I was thin.
It should seem ironic, I looked how the world said I should
But now I am rounder and more curved I ooze hot, hot sex
And he roars delight in my ears as I push my pot belly into his
Flat tattooed stomach.
We do not match on the outside, he is dark, entrancing, mysterious,
I am sexual, strong and pale from hiding in shadows to add to my desire,
But the sweat on my brow whispers to me
That we do, we do.
He held me once, and did not need to speak it,
I am beautiful, I know.
I am beautiful.

Quotations from *Moby-Dick; or, The Whale*, 14 of 22
Herman Melville
1819-1891 American

The skeleton dimensions I shall now proceed to set down are copied verbatim from my right arm, where I had them tattooed; as in my wild wanderings at that period, there was no other secure way of preserving such valuable statistics.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

According to my careful calculation, I say, a Sperm Whale of the largest magnitude, between eighty-five and ninety feet in length, and something less than forty feet in its fullest circumference, such a whale will weigh at least ninety tons; so that reckoning thirteen men to a ton, he would considerably outweigh the combined population of a whole village of one thousand one hundred inhabitants.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

No. Only in the heart of quickest perils; only when within the eddyings of his angry flukes; only on the profound unbounded sea, can the fully invested whale be truly and livingly found out.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

The smallest, where the spine tapers away into the tail, is only two inches in width, and looks something like a white billiard-ball. I was told that there were still smaller ones, but they had been lost by some little cannibal urchins, the priest's children, who had stolen them to play marbles with. Thus we see how that the spine of even the hugest of living things tapers off at last into simple child's play.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it.

Ere entering upon the subject of Fossil Whales, I present my credentials as a geologist, by stating that in my miscellaneous time I have been a stone-mason, and also a great digger of ditches, canals, and wells, wine-vaults, cellars, and cisterns of all sorts.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

I am horror-struck at this antemosaic, unsourced existence of the unspeakable terrors of the whale, which, having been before all time, must needs exist after all humane ages are over.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

They keep a Whale's Rib of an incredible length for a Miracle, which lying upon the Ground with its convex part uppermost, makes an Arch, the Head of which cannot be reached by a Man upon a Camel's Back.
—John Leo, as quoted in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale by Herman Melville

Whether owing to the almost omniscient look-outs at the mast-heads of the whale-ships, now penetrating even through Behring's straits, and into the remotest secret drawers and lockers of the world; and the thousand harpoons and lances darted along all continental coasts; the moot point is, whether Leviathan can long endure so wide a chase, and so remorseless a havoc; whether he must not at last be exterminated from the waters, and the last whale, like the last man, smoke his last pipe, and then himself evaporate in the final puff.

Comparing the humped herds of whales with the humped herds of buffalo, which, not forty years ago, overspread by tens of thousands the prairies of Illinois and Missouri, and shook their iron manes and scowled with their thunder-clotted brows upon the sites of populous river-capitals, where now the polite broker sells you land at a dollar an inch; in such a comparison an irresistible argument would seem furnished, to show that the hunted whale cannot now escape speedy extinction.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

If ever the world is to be again flooded, like the Netherlands, to kill off its rats, then the eternal whale will still survive, and rearing upon the topmost crest of the equatorial flood, spout his frothed defiance to the skies.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

And, indeed, it seemed small matter for wonder, that for all his pervading, mad recklessness, Ahab did at times give careful heed to the condition of that dead bone upon which he partly stood.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Even the highest earthly felicities ever have a certain unsignifying pettiness lurking in them.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

In the face of all the glad, hay-making suns, and soft-cymballing, round harvest-moons, we must needs give in to this: that the gods themselves are not for ever glad. The ineffaceable, sad birth-mark in the brow of man, is but the stamp of sorrow in the signers.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

The above hinted casualty -- remaining, as it did, moodily unaccounted for by Ahab -- invested itself with terrors, not entirely underived from the land of spirits and of wails.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Let the unseen, ambiguous synod in the air, or the vindictive princes and potentates of fire, have to do or not with earthly Ahab, yet, in this present matter of his leg, he took plain practical procedures; -- he called the carpenter.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Seat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn, and take high abstracted man alone; and he seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe. But from the same point, take mankind in mass, and for the most part, they seem a mob of unnecessary duplicates, both contemporary and hereditary.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Was it that this old carpenter had been a life-long wanderer, whose much rolling, to and fro, not only had gathered no moss; but what is more, had rubbed off whatever small outward clingings might have originally pertained to him?
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Here he comes, or it's somebody else, that's certain.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“I do deem it now a most meaning thing, that that old Greek, Prometheus, who made men, they say, should have been a blacksmith, and animated them with fire; for what's made in fire must properly belong to fire; and so hell's probable.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Or would'st thou rather work in clay?”

“Sir? -- Clay? clay, Sir? That's mud; we leave clay to ditchers, Sir.”

“The fellow's impious!”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“How dost thou know that some entire, living, thinking thing may not be invisibly and uninterpenetratingly standing precisely where thou now standest; aye, and standing there in thy spite?”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Oh, Life! Here I am, proud as Greek god, and yet standing debtor to this blockhead for a bone to stand on! Cursed be that mortal inter-indebtedness which will not do away with ledgers. I would be free as air; and I'm down in the whole world's books. I am so rich, I could have given bid for bid with the wealthiest Praetorians at the auction of the Roman empire (which was the world's); and yet I owe for the flesh in the tongue I brag with. By heavens! I'll get a crucible, and into it, and dissolve myself down to one small, compendious vertebra. So.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Yet I don't stop to plug my leak; for who can find it in the deep-loaded hull; or how hope to plug it, even if found, in this life's howling gale?”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“The Bombed and the Bombardier”
Andi with an introduction by Art Kramer
1967- German

On April 20 1945 we (the 344th Bomb Group) attacked the Bavarian city of Straubing. I was one of the bombardiers on that mission. I recorded our bomb hits and after the war placed the photograph on my website where it can be seen today. Recently I began to receive letters from a Straubing resident who’s family went through our bombing. Here is their story.

(The letters have been slightly edited for brevity and relevance.)

--Art Kramer


Dear Mr. Kramer,

Today I found your picture of Straubing in the Internet. I am 37 years old and I grew up in Straubing. I think I have a story for you belonging to this picture. But because my last English lesson is 20 years ago it is hard for me to write in English. I can try to tell the story to you if you are interested in it.

Greetings from Bavaria

* * *

Hallo Arthur,

I hope it’s no problem for that I call you Arthur. Your name sounds German, doesn’t it?

Yes I want to tell you the story -- and it will be an emotional story for me. But it will take me a lot of time to write in English language. I am not used to write in English. So I hope you excuse my mistakes.

By finding your picture I get really scared. If you have released your bombs over Straubing seconds earlier or later I would not be alive. Somewhere on this picture is my Grandmother with her little baby (my mother) and I want to tell you here story. She told it to me in the early 90s and died in 1996 at 83 years old -- her body was as a matter of a lot of illness in a really bad constitution but her brain was still very alive -- but in 1996 she hasn't lost her power.
Please give me some days to write her story. At the moment I have a lot of work for my job and at the evenings when I have time to write emails I am tired.

Some years ago I bought a book about the bomb raid over Straubing. There are pictures in it. I will look for it. Maybe there are some pictures in it which you want to see.

Have you contact to people from Straubing?

Greetings from snowy Straubing

Andi

* * *

Well now Arthur,

I try my best in English.

I was born in 1967. Straubing has been grown at that time and I grew up at the place I signed with the red point on your picture. You will find this picture as a detached file to this mail. I still remember the damage your bombs have done around the train station. At the beginning of the 80s the last prints of the bombs has been cleaned up. But sometimes still streets are close by construction works when they find by digging in the ground blind bombs of the bomb raid.

In the early 90s I lived in Munich while I was studying at the Ludwigs Maximilians Universität. Every weekend I went home to Straubing to meet my family and my girlfriend.

It was summer when I visited my Grandmother. We were sitting outside in the garden -- while she was telling her old stories I read the newspaper. After a little while she told me about the “Amerikaner” and how she survived the bomb raid. I stopped reading the newspaper and started to listen to her story. It was not a fantastic story but when there would have been a bad end I would have not been alive.

Here is her little life story:

In 1913 she was born in a little village about 10 miles outside of Straubing. Her family was a poor farmer's family. Her mother has borne 17 babies. But at that time a lot of little children died because there were no antibiotics on pneumonia. So in her family: 5 children died.

She grew up in the poor time of World War 1 by having no luxuries and feeling hungry every day. It must haven been in the early 1920s when she lost most of her possibility to hear. (I still don’t know the reason I have never asked but I feel now that I have to ask my mother very soon about this.)

14 years old she learned how to be a tailor. At the time she finished to become a tailor it was very hard to find a job in Germany. So she did what every people in Bavaria did when they were poor: She went from farm to farm to work in the farmer’s family as a tailor as long as the work in the family was done. She got paid very poor but at every farm she had a roof over her had and something to eat. It must have been the late 1930s when she met the man she married.

I remember her telling me stories about the voting and the Nazis. She had tears in her eyes. She said she voted for Hitler because he promised a better life. But not really a lot for her situation changed with Hitler and she had not the possibility to inform herself because of her fight to survive and her handicap in hearing.

She believed in Hitler until he has stolen her husband.

I also remember that we had only one TV in our family. It was in my Grandmother’s room. I once went to her room to watch TV -- I made her a construction with a strong amplifier and a headset so she could manage to follow the words. She was sitting in her room watching a documentation film about Dachau while she was praying with tears in her eyes.

With her husband she rented a little room. But they could not meet each other very often because they had to go to work. She as a tailor every week at another farm. He as a carpenter at other farms.

When 1939 the war started her husband had to go to the army. He was in the 6th Army (Do you know the story of the 6th Army in WW2?)

At the end of spring 1941 her husband -- his name was Johann Singer -- got front vacation. He was stationed in Russia. And while the time he was at home my Grandma got pregnant.

She still has to work a lot. End of December her husband was lucky to get again vacation from the war. He was waiting to join the birth of my mother. But on 2nd of January 1942 he has to go back to the front again. One day later my mother was born. He has never seen his daughter. In January 1943 he got missed in Stalingrad. He never came back again.

(If you will find information about the Germans and the Russians fighting in Stalingrad you will stop to ask what missed in action means at that time. To be honest I believe that he was butchered by the Russians.)

My mother has never seen her Daddy and the Daddy had never seen his daughter. But there are letters from him out of Stalingrad. By reading that letters I started to cry myself: They had nothing to eat at Stalingrad but my Grandfather sent a little piece of chocolate to my baby mother. He wrote in the letter how he joins to imagine my mother by eating this piece of chocolate with all the brown color around her mouth.

My Grandma still believed that her husband will be found alive one day. But while having a baby she had to change her life. It was no longer possible for her to move from one farm to another. So she shared a little room with her sister Lea in Straubing. Now she tried to find work in Straubing by families to make their tailor work. It was not easy for her because it was very hard for her to hear.

So in April 1945 she was working at a family which has a house next to the train station. She was lucky to take her little daughter with her. While she was sewing the little daughter was playing at the floor.

On April the 20th she was doing her work. Because she was not able to hear she could not hear the siren, which tells that the bombers are coming. And nobody remembers her working at the house. So she was still working while the first bombs were falling. When the house got the first shakes of the bomb explosions she got very frightened. But she could manage to fetch her little daughter and find a way out of this house. She runs between the bomb explosions with her little daughter in front of her chest for her life. And she made it. By knowing my Grandma I am sure that she would have made all just to survive.

Soon the war was over after the bomb raid over Straubing -- and the Americans for the poorer people had been very welcome. The GIs occupied Straubing. And hunger and fear starts to be over. But at the next years after the war it was still a hard fight for life for my mother and Grandma.

First things my mother remembers about the GIs was fear. She has never seen colored people. But: They throw chocolate out of their tanks and Jeeps. And so the little kid after a little while went very lucky by seeing American soldiers. They also brought food to the schools.

At the time the Americans are still loved by the Germans because of the help they brought to them.

I have been to the USA for vacation after I graduated from school in 1987. I met a man in my age in Oklahoma. We got friends. One year later he came over the ocean to visit me in Germany. My Grandma was full of luck to meet a real American. She also was full of thanks to your nation. So my mother. You brought them peace and help in very hard times.

And the life of my Grandma? It was going on for her to be hard. She got a bad tumor spinal column in 1966. She made it also the doctors said: no chance. Later she got hard rheumatism and gout. She made it.

In the 1980s she got poisoned by medicine in a hospital. She made it.

1987 I had to be a soldier at the German Army for 15 months. I had been a “Gebirgsjäger” that’s a soldier in the mountains. My Grandmother always was in worry about me. She always was in fear that I once have to go to war. But for God's thank there was no war at that time. With all her worries about me she made it.

Some years later she went blind. No problem for her.

All the way she joined life very lucky. She never thought about dying. She was waiting for every new day what it will bring funny and lucky things. She was too lucky with life and too curious what in life was still waiting for her.

But every people have a reservoir of power. And it gets used up. She used that reservoir more than up by having no pity for herself and waiting positively on every new day. I still miss her with all the power she had.

That’s the little story I had to think about by finding that old picture in the Internet. Not a very exciting story -- but it’s my story which holds me from sleeping the last night.

Now it’s late in the evening here in Straubing. This mail took me nearly 2 hours. But to find sleep this night I had to do it today also I am very tired.

I hope you got not bored with this mail.

Greetings from Straubing

Andi

* * *

Dear Art,

I now found the book which describes the bomb run to Straubing.

It is written in German. I thought about buying the book and send it to you.

But it seems to be not easy to get t his book once more. It is sold out. There might be a way to contact the author of the book to get an exemple. But it’s all in German and I don’t know anything about your German knowledge.

But if you want me to get the book for you I can try it and send it to you. It will not cost you anything.

What I read in the book:

The raid started on 18th of April. Around 9.30 o’clock reached -- 5000 feet high -- the English Channel to cross it. When they arrived 3 hours later the German controlled air they were in 20000 feet high because of the German flak. No German fighters around. Some time before the bombers had to cross dangerous territory 259 P-51 fighters came to assist the bombers. Altogether now the task force over Bavaria includes 518 airplanes.

The main target was Tabor/Budweis.

Secondary target was Pilsen. Both targets were in Czech Republic.

But short before the bombers took off they brought another secondary target on the map for briefing. This was Straubing.

Half an hour after midday the scout planes came from Czech Republic back to the task force. They reported deep clouds over Tabor/Budweis and Pilsen. But over Straubing there were only a partly and less cloudy sky.

Now 174 B-17 Bombers and 99 P-51 Fighters started their run to Straubing. The 93rd Squadron keeps on flying to Tabor/Budweis. Which was really luck for Straubing because 352000 kg of bombs were not falling on the town.

The 93rd Squadron bombed Kolin. They got flak fire and German Me 262 fighters came up to fight against them. They had been too fast for the P-51 because of their jet engine.

Over the Bavarian Forest around the mountains Arber and Lusen the bomb targeting run started.

With the target picture the pathfinder planes showed the bombers the way. After a while: “Bombs away.”

2000 detonations let the town Straubing tremble.

The bombing started at 1.07 pm and ended at 1.49 pm. 480800 kg of blasting bombs and 33800 kg of firebombs came down on Strabing. 2 planes -- one of the 390 BG and one of the 388 BG -- through down notes for the people. For the helping people in the town it took nearly 2 days to fight the fires and save people in the bury cellars. More than 300 death people. A lot more people died as a follow of their injuries.

In 1952 they digged out the last broken down cellar. They found 30 more bodies.

Now in the book are following stories about what happened to people and how they died. I don’t want to translate this.

30% of Straubing was damaged.

The bombers flight back to England took more time then the pilots thought. The fuel got less. But all the planes made it home. From the 1650 crew members nobody had to die at this raid. No plane was shot down. Only one plane had damage at his propellers and it made an emergency landing in Brüssel.

In my last story I told you about my mother’s side of the family. Here is a little story about my father’s side.

My father was the youngest of four brothers. He was lucky because he was too young to fight as a soldier at WW 2. He is born in 1932. But his brothers had been old enough. One was at the Uboats, one was infantry in Russia and the oldest was Sergeant at the German Luftwaffe. He was a mechanic at the German Bomber HE 111. He had to share the Battle over Britain. Some years ago, maybe in the late 80s when my Grandfather died, I talked to him.

He said:

During the war we were flying our bomb raids. Nobody thought about the people living down under us. We wanted to hit our targets and that was the success we had to have. So we were glad if we hit our targets and didn’t even think about the evil we cause at the ground.

I think that makes war a lot easier to accept: Fighting the targets by not seeing how people die. It was the same at the Uboats.

The uncle of me who was at the infantry in Russia had to fight against other men. He had to do and see really bad things at war. He is the one who has problems to sleep at night because of these experiences. And to say that: He was a only conventional soldier, not SS or things like that. But he to recognize war as that what it is.

I did my military service because I had to do it. I am so glad that I never had to fight in a war. I am really thankful for the chance to grown up and live in peace.

And what I want to say also:

The Americans did a lot to make Germany free from the Nazis and help people to come on their feet after the war again. So when older people tell from their experiences with war and the Americans they do it with a respect and gratitude.

Greetings from Bavaria

Andi

PS:

By the way: Unbelievable, but all the brothers of my father survived the war more or less healthy.

As the brother at home my father had to pray with his mother every day for his brothers. He had to do it near a cross with Jesus on it in his kitchen. Seems that it helped. As a man later he moved from his hometown Landshut to Straubing. He does not believe very much in God but this cross is still hanging in his office.

“Who Made the Law?”
Leslie Coulson
1889-1916 English

Who made the Law that men should die in meadows?
Who spake the word that blood should splash in lanes?
Who gave it forth that gardens should be bone-yards?
Who spread the hills with flesh, and blood, and brains?
Who made the Law?

Who made the Law that Death should stalk the village?
Who spake the word to kill among the sheaves,
Who gave it forth that death should lurk in hedgerows,
Who flung the dead among the fallen leaves?
Who made the Law?

Those who return shall find that peace endures,
Find old things old, and know the things they knew,
Walk in the garden, slumber by the fireside,
Share the peace of dawn, and dream amid the dew --
Those who return.

Those who return shall till the ancient pastures,
Clean-hearted men shall guide the plough-horse reins,
Some shall grow apples and flowers in the valleys,
Some shall go courting in summer down the lanes --
THOSE WHO RETURN.

But who made the Law? the Trees shall whisper to him:
"See, see the blood -- the splashes on our bark!"
Walking the meadows, he shall hear bones crackle,
And fleshless mouths shall gibber in silent lanes at dark.
Who made the Law?

Who made the Law? At noon upon the hillside
His ears shall hear a moan, his cheeks shall feel a breath,
And all along the valleys, past gardens, crofts, and homesteads,
HE who made the Law,
He who made the Law,
He who made the Law shall walk along with Death.

Quotations from *Moby-Dick; or, The Whale*, 15 of 22
Herman Melville
1819-1891 American

Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books. And the drawing near of Death, which alike levels all, alike impresses all with a last revelation, which only an author from the dead could adequately tell.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Of all mortals, some dying men are the most tyrannical; and certainly, since they will shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be indulged.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

They asked him, then, whether to live or die was a matter of his own sovereign will and pleasure. He answered, certainly. In a word, it was Queequeg's conceit, that if a man made up his mind to live, mere sickness could not kill him: nothing but a whale, or a gale, or some violent, ungovernable, unintelligent destroyer of that sort.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

This tattooing had been the work of a departed prophet and seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequeg in his own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrous work in one volume; but whose mysteries not even himself could read, though his own live heart beat against them; and these mysteries were therefore destined in the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon they were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last. And this thought it must have been which suggested to Ahab that wild exclamation of his, when one morning turning away from surveying poor Queequeg -- “Oh, devilish tantalization of the gods!”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

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; or, The Whale

This mysterious, divine Pacific zones the world's whole bulk about; makes all coasts one bay to it; seems the tide-beating heart of earth.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

With one nostril he unthinkingly snuffed the sugary musk from the Bashee isles (in whose sweet woods mild lovers must be walking), and with the other consciously inhaled the salt breath of the new found sea; that sea in which the hated White Whale must even then be swimming.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

In his very sleep, his ringing cry ran through the vaulted hull, “Stern all! the White Whale spouts thick blood!”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Nevertheless, this old man's was a patient hammer wielded by a patient arm. No murmur, no impatience, no petulence did come from him. Silent, slow, and solemn; bowing over still further his chronically broken back, he toiled away, as if toil were life itself, and the heavy beating of his hammer the heavy beating of his heart. And so it was. -- Most miserable!
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Oh, woe on woe! Oh, Death, why canst thou not sometimes be timely? Hadst thou taken this old blacksmith to thyself ere his full ruin came upon him, then had the young widow had a delicious grief, and her orphans a truly venerable, legendary sire to dream of in their after years; and all of them a care-killing competency. But Death plucked down some virtuous elder brother, on whose whistling daily toil solely hung the responsibilities of some other family, and left the worse than useless old man standing, till the hideous rot of life should make him easier to harvest.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Death seems the only desirable sequel for a career like this; but Death is only a launching into the region of the strange Untried; it is but the first salutation to the possibilities of the immense Remote, the Wild, the Watery, the Unshored; therefore, to the death-longing eyes of such men, who still have left in them some interior compunctions against suicide, does the all-contributed and all-receptive ocean alluringly spread forth his whole plain of unimaginable, taking terrors, and wonderful, new-life adventures; and from the hearts of infinite Pacifics, the thousand mermaids sing to them—“Come hither, broken-hearted; here is another life without the guilt of intermediate death; here are wonders supernatural, without dying for them. Come hither! bury thyself in a life which, to your now equally abhorred and abhorring, landed world, is more oblivious than death. Come hither! put up thy grave-stone, too, within the churchyard, and come hither, till we marry thee!”

Hearkening to these voices, East and West, by early sun-rise, and by fall of eve, the blacksmith's soul responded, Aye, I come! And so Perth went a-whaling.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Because I am scorched all over, Captain Ahab,” answered Perth, resting for a moment on his hammer; “I am past scorching.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“In no Paradise myself, I am impatient of all misery in others that is not mad.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“How can’st thou endure without being mad? Do the heavens yet hate thee, that thou can’st not go mad?”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“What wert thou making there?”

“Welding an old pike-head, Sir; there were seams and dents in it.”

“And can’st thou make it all smooth, again, blacksmith, after such hard usage as it had?”

“I think so, Sir.”

“And I suppose thou can’st smoothe almost any seams and dents; never mind how hard the metal, blacksmith?”

“Aye, Sir, I think I can; all seams and dents but one.”

“Look ye here, then,” cried Ahab, passionately advancing, and leaning with both hands on Perth’s shoulders; “look ye here—here—can ye smoothe out a seam like this, blacksmith,” sweeping one hand across his ribbed brows; “if thou could’st, blacksmith, glad enough would I lay my head upon thy anvil, and feel thy heaviest hammer between my eyes. Answer! Can’st thou smoothe this seam?”

“Oh! that is the one, Sir! Said I not all seams and dents but one?”

“Aye, blacksmith, it is the one; aye, man, it is unsmoothable.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Yet I fear something, Captain Ahab. Is not this harpoon for the White Whale?”

“For the white fiend!”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“The Storm”
Kate Chopin
1850-1904 American

I

The leaves were so still that even Bibi thought it was going to rain. Bobinôt, who was accustomed to converse on terms of perfect equality with his little son, called the child's attention to certain sombre clouds that were rolling with sinister intention from the west, accompanied by a sullen, threatening roar. They were at Friedheimer's store and decided to remain there till the storm had passed. They sat within the door on two empty kegs. Bibi was four years old and looked very wise.

"Mama'll be 'fraid, yes," he suggested with blinking eyes.

"She'll shut the house. Maybe she got Sylvie helpin' her this evenin'," Bobinôt responded reassuringly.

"No; she ent got Sylvie. Sylvie was helpin' her yistiday," piped Bibi.

Bobinôt arose and going across to the counter purchased a can of shrimps, of which Calixta was very fond. Then he retumed to his perch on the keg and sat stolidly holding the can of shrimps while the storm burst. It shook the wooden store and seemed to be ripping great furrows in the distant field. Bibi laid his little hand on his father's knee and was not afraid.

II

Calixta, at home, felt no uneasiness for their safety. She sat at a side window sewing furiously on a sewing machine. She was greatly occupied and did not notice the approaching storm. But she felt very warm and often stopped to mop her face on which the perspiration gathered in beads. She unfastened her white sacque at the throat. It began to grow dark, and suddenly realizing the situation she got up hurriedly and went about closing windows and doors.

Out on the small front gallery she had hung Bobinôt's Sunday clothes to dry and she hastened out to gather them before the rain fell. As she stepped outside, Alcée Laballière rode in at the gate. She had not seen him very often since her marriage, and never alone. She stood there with Bobinôt's coat in her hands, and the big rain drops began to fall. Alcée rode his horse under the shelter of a side projection where the chickens had huddled and there were plows and a harrow piled up in the corner.

"May I come and wait on your gallery till the storm is over, Calixta?" he asked.

"Come 'long in, M'sieur Alcée."

His voice and her own startled her as if from a trance, and she seized Bobinôt's vest. Alcée, mounting to the porch, grabbed the trousers and snatched Bibi's braided jacket that was about to be carried away by a sudden gust of wind. He expressed an intention to remain outside, but it was soon apparent that he might as well have been out in the open: the water beat in upon the boards in driving sheets, and he went inside, closing the door after him. It was even necessary to put something beneath the door to keep the water out.

"My! what a rain! It's good two years sence it rain' like that," exclaimed Calixta as she rolled up a piece of bagging and Alcée helped her to thrust it beneath the crack.

She was a little fuller of figure than five years before when she married; but she had lost nothing of her vivacity. Her blue eyes still retained their melting quality; and her yellow hair, disheveled by the wind and rain, kinked more stubbornly than ever about her ears and temples.

The rain beat upon the low, shingled roof with a force and clatter that threatened to break an entrance and deluge them there. They were in the dining room—the sitting room—the general utility room. Adjoining was her bed room, with Bibi's couch along side her own. The door stood open, and the room with its white, monumental bed, its closed shutters, looked dim and mysterious.

Alcée flung himself into a rocker and Calixta nervously began to gather up from the floor the lengths of a cotton sheet which she had been sewing.

"If this keeps up, Dieu sait if the levees goin' to stan it!" she exclaimed.

"What have you got to do with the levees?"

"I got enough to do! An' there's Bobinôt with Bibi out in that storm—if he only didn' left Friedheimer's!"

"Let us hope, Calixta, that Bobinôt's got sense enough to come in out of a cyclone."

She went and stood at the window with a greatly disturbed look on her face. She wiped the frame that was clouded with moisture. It was stiflingly hot. Alcée got up and joined her at the window, looking over her shoulder. The rain was coming down in sheets obscuring the view of far-off cabins and enveloping the distant wood in a gray mist. The playing of the lightning was incessant. A bolt struck a tall chinaberry tree at the edge of the field. It filled all visible space with a blinding glare and the crash seemed to invade the very boards they stood upon.

Calixta put her hands to her eyes, and with a cry, staggered backward. Alcée's arm encircled her, and for an instant he drew her close and spasmodically to him.

"Bonté!" she cried, releasing herself from his encircling arm and retreating from the window, "the house'll go next! If I only knew w'ere Bibi was!" She would not compose herself; she would not be seated. Alcée clasped her shoulders and looked into her face. The contact of her warm, palpitating body when he had unthinkingly drawn her into his arms, had aroused all the old-time infatuation and desire for her flesh.

"Calixta," he said, "don't be frightened. Nothing can happen. The house is too low to be struck, with so many tall trees standing about. There! aren't you going to be quiet? say, aren't you?" He pushed her hair back from her face that was warm and steaming. Her lips were as red and moist as pomegranate seed. Her white neck and a glimpse of her full, firm bosom disturbed him powerfully. As she glanced up at him the fear in her liquid blue eyes had given place to a drowsy gleam that unconsciously betrayed a sensuous desire. He looked down into her eyes and there was nothing for him to do but to gather her lips in a kiss. It reminded him of Assumption.

"Do you remember—in Assumption, Calixta?" he asked in a low voice broken by passion. Oh! she remembered; for in Assumption he had kissed her and kissed and kissed her; until his senses would well nigh fail, and to save her he would resort to a desperate flight. If she was not an immaculate dove in those days, she was still inviolate; a passionate creature whose very defenselessness had made her defense, against which his honor forbade him to prevail. Now—well, now—her lips seemed in a manner free to be tasted, as well as her round, white throat and her whiter breasts.

They did not heed the crashing torrents, and the roar of the elements made her laugh as she lay in his arms. She was a revelation in that dim, mysterious chamber; as white as the couch she lay upon. Her firm, elastic flesh that was knowing for the first time its birthright, was like a creamy lily that the sun invites to contribute its breath and perfume to the undying life of the world.

The generous abundance of her passion, without guile or trickery, was like a white flame which penetrated and found response in depths of his own sensuous nature that had never yet been reached.

When he touched her breasts they gave themselves up in quivering ecstasy, inviting his lips. Her mouth was a fountain of delight. And when he possessed her, they seemed to swoon together at the very borderland of life's mystery.

He stayed cushioned upon her, breathless, dazed, enervated, with his heart beating like a hammer upon her. With one hand she clasped his head, her lips lightly touching his forehead. The other hand stroked with a soothing rhythm his muscular shoulders.

The growl of the thunder was distant and passing away. The rain beat softly upon the shingles, inviting them to drowsiness and sleep. But they dared not yield.

III

The rain was over; and the sun was turning the glistening green world into a palace of gems. Calixta, on the gallery, watched Alcée ride away. He turned and smiled at her with a beaming face; and she lifted her pretty chin in the air and laughed aloud.

Bobinôt and Bibi, trudging home, stopped without at the cistern to make themselves presentable.

"My! Bibi, w'at will yo' mama say! You ought to be ashame'. You oughtn' put on those good pants. Look at 'em! An' that mud on yo' collar! How you got that mud on yo' collar, Bibi? I never saw such a boy!" Bibi was the picture of pathetic resignation. Bobinôt was the embodiment of serious solicitude as he strove to remove from his own person and his son's the signs of their tramp over heavy roads and through wet fields. He scraped the mud off Bibi's bare legs and feet with a stick and carefully removed all traces from his heavy brogans. Then, prepared for the worst—the meeting with an over-scrupulous housewife, they entered cautiously at the back door.

Calixta was preparing supper. She had set the table and was dripping coffee at the hearth. She sprang up as they came in.

"Oh, Bobinôt! You back! My! but I was uneasy. W'ere you been during the rain? An' Bibi? he ain't wet? he ain't hurt?" She had clasped Bibi and was kissing him effusively. Bobinôt's explanations and apologies which he had been composing all along the way, died on his lips as Calixta felt him to see if he were dry, and seemed to express nothing but satisfaction at their safe return.

"I brought you some shrimps, Calixta," offered Bobinôt, hauling the can from his ample side pocket and laying it on the table.

"Shrimps! Oh, Bobinôt! you too good fo' anything!" and she gave him a smacking kiss on the cheek that resounded, "J'vous réponds, we'll have a feas' to-night! umph- umph!"

Bobinôt and Bibi began to relax and enjoy themselves, and when the three seated themselves at table they laughed much and so loud that anyone might have heard them as far away as Laballière's.

IV

Alcée Laballière wrote to his wife, Clarisse, that night. It was a loving letter, full of tender solicitude. He told her not to hurry back, but if she and the babies liked it at Biloxi, to stay a month longer. He was getting on nicely; and though he missed them, he was willing to bear the separation a while longer—realizing that their health and pleasure were the first things to be considered.

V

As for Clarisse, she was charmed upon receiving her husband's letter. She and the babies were doing well. The society was agreeable; many of her old friends and acquaintances were at the bay. And the first free breath since her marriage seemed to restore the pleasant liberty of her maiden days. Devoted as she was to her husband, their intimate conjugal life was something which she was more than willing to forego for a while.

So the storm passed and every one was happy.