"He turns and turns him to it,--how slowly, but how steadfastly, his
homage-rendering and invoking brow, with his last dying motions. He too
worships fire; most faithful, broad, baronial vassal of the sun!--Oh
that these too-favouring eyes should see these too-favouring sights.
Look! here, far water-locked; beyond all hum of human weal or woe;
in these most candid and impartial seas; where to traditions no rocks
furnish tablets; where for long Chinese ages, the billows have still
rolled on speechless and unspoken to, as stars that shine upon the
Niger's unknown source; here, too, life dies sunwards full of faith; but
see! no sooner dead, than death whirls round the corpse, and it heads
some other way.
"Oh, thou dark Hindoo half of nature, who of drowned bones hast builded
thy separate throne somewhere in the heart of these unverdured seas;
thou art an infidel, thou queen, and too truly speakest to me in the
wide-slaughtering Typhoon, and the hushed burial of its after calm. Nor
has this thy whale sunwards turned his dying head, and then gone round
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