Glimpses do ye seem to see
of that mortally intolerable truth;
that all deep, earnest thinking
is but the intrepid effort of the soul
to keep the open independence of her sea;
while the wildest winds of heaven and earth
conspire to cast her on the treacherous,
slavish shore?
But as in landlessness alone
resides the highest truth, shoreless,
indefinite as God – so is it better
to perish in that howling infinite,
than to be ingloriously dashed upon the lee,
even if that were safety! . . .
“The Lee Shore,” Moby Dick, Chapter 23
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