Moby Dick

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leaves, the great sun seemed a flying shuttle weaving the unwearied
verdure. Oh, busy weaver! unseen weaver!--pause!--one word!--whither
flows the fabric? what palace may it deck? wherefore all these ceaseless
toilings? Speak, weaver!--stay thy hand!--but one single word with
thee! Nay--the shuttle flies--the figures float from forth the loom; the
freshet-rushing carpet for ever slides away. The weaver-god, he weaves;
and by that weaving is he deafened, that he hears no mortal voice; and
by that humming, we, too, who look on the loom are deafened; and only
when we escape it shall we hear the thousand voices that speak through
it. For even so it is in all material factories. The spoken words that
are inaudible among the flying spindles; those same words are plainly
heard without the walls, bursting from the opened casements. Thereby
have villainies been detected. Ah, mortal! then, be heedful; for so, in
all this din of the great world's loom, thy subtlest thinkings may be
overheard afar.

Now, amid the green, life-restless loom of that Arsacidean wood, the