Moby Dick

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of common grass that will grow anywhere, between the earthy clefts of
Greenland ice or in Vesuvius lava. How the wild winds blow it; they whip
it about me as the torn shreds of split sails lash the tossed ship they
cling to. A vile wind that has no doubt blown ere this through prison
corridors and cells, and wards of hospitals, and ventilated them, and
now comes blowing hither as innocent as fleeces. Out upon it!--it's
tainted. Were I the wind, I'd blow no more on such a wicked, miserable
world. I'd crawl somewhere to a cave, and slink there. And yet, 'tis a
noble and heroic thing, the wind! who ever conquered it? In every fight
it has the last and bitterest blow. Run tilting at it, and you but run
through it. Ha! a coward wind that strikes stark naked men, but will not
stand to receive a single blow. Even Ahab is a braver thing--a nobler
thing than THAT. Would now the wind but had a body; but all the things
that most exasperate and outrage mortal man, all these things are
bodiless, but only bodiless as objects, not as agents. There's a most
special, a most cunning, oh, a most malicious difference! And yet, I
say again, and swear it now, that there's something all glorious and