Moby Dick

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CHAPTER 132. The Symphony.


It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were
hardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air was
transparently pure and soft, with a woman's look, and the robust and
man-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells, as Samson's
chest in his sleep.

Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of small,
unspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air;
but to and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed
mighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these were the strong,
troubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea.

But though thus contrasting within, the contrast was only in shades and
shadows without; those two seemed one; it was only the sex, as it were,