Moby Dick

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great, white, worshipped skeleton lay lounging--a gigantic idler! Yet,
as the ever-woven verdant warp and woof intermixed and hummed around
him, the mighty idler seemed the cunning weaver; himself all woven
over with the vines; every month assuming greener, fresher verdure; but
himself a skeleton. Life folded Death; Death trellised Life; the grim
god wived with youthful Life, and begat him curly-headed glories.

Now, when with royal Tranquo I visited this wondrous whale, and saw the
skull an altar, and the artificial smoke ascending from where the real
jet had issued, I marvelled that the king should regard a chapel as
an object of vertu. He laughed. But more I marvelled that the priests
should swear that smoky jet of his was genuine. To and fro I paced
before this skeleton--brushed the vines aside--broke through the
ribs--and with a ball of Arsacidean twine, wandered, eddied long amid
its many winding, shaded colonnades and arbours. But soon my line was
out; and following it back, I emerged from the opening where I entered.
I saw no living thing within; naught was there but bones.