You have a custom It is customary that every day you follow this custom You have become accustomed to following your custom You fall unconscious in a sandwich of flesh, cushions, ancient lives, goddesses, soil, firmament, infinity, infinity, infinity... I am here to customize your custom You are letting me become accustomed to customizing your custom You now have a custom custom You faint for renewal You faint for redemption You faint for me You faint for me Take your custom custom Become accustomed to your customized custom Enjoy your custom custom

When the leaves, by thousands thinned, A thousand times have whirled in the wind, And the moon, with hollow cheek, Staring from her hollow height, Consolation seems to seek From the dim, reechoing night; And the fog-streaks dead and white Lie like ghosts of lost delight O'er highest earth and lowest sky; Then, Autumn, work thy witchery! Strew the ground with poppy-seeds, And let my bed be hung with weeds, Growing gaunt and rank and tall, Drooping o'er me like a pall. Send thy stealthy, white-eyed mist Across my brow to turn and twist Fold on fold, and leave me blind To all save visions in the mind. Then, in the depth of rain-fed streams I shall slumber, and in dreams Slide through some long glen that burns With a crust of blood-red ferns And brown-withered wings of brake Like a burning lava-lake;— So, urged to fearful, faster flow By the awful gasp, "Hahk! hahk!" of the crow, Shall pass by many a haunted rood Of the nutty, odorous wood; Or, where the hemlocks lean and loom, Shall fill my heart with bitter gloom; Till, lured by light, reflected cloud, I burst aloft my watery shroud, And upward through the ether sail Far above the shrill wind's wail;—but... Falling thence, my soul involve With the dust dead flowers dissolve; And, gliding out at last to sea, Lulled to a long tranquillity

D’ye feel brave, men, brave? As fearless fire, cried Stubb Helm there; steady, as thou goest, and hast been going What a lovely day again! were it a new-made world and made for a summer-house to the angels and this morning, a fairer day could not dawn upon that world Here’s food for thought, had Ahab time to think but Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels that’s tingling enough for mortal man! to think’s audacity God only has that right and privilege Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that D’ye feel brave? this old skull cracks so, like a glass in which the contents turn to ice, and shiver it And yet, I’ve sometimes thought my brain was very calm—frozen calm but no, it’s like that sort 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 Were I the wind, I’d blow no more on such a wicked, miserable world --all these things are bodiless, but only bodiless as objects, not as agents-- I’d crawl somewhere to a cave, and slink there And yet, ’tis a noble and heroic thing, the wind --There’s a most special, a most cunning, oh, a most malicious difference-- who ever conquered it? In every fight it has the last and bitterest blow --These warm Trade Winds, at least, that in the clear heavens blow straight on-- Run tilting at it, and you but run through it Ha! a coward wind that strikes, but will not stand to receive a single blow --in strong and steadfast, vigorous mildness; and veer not from their mark-- Even Ahab is a braver thing—a nobler thing that that --shift and swerve about, uncertain where to go at last-- but all the things that most exasperate and outrage mortal man --uncertain where to go at last-- all these things are bodiless, but only bodiless as objects --these Trades, or something like them—something so unchangeable and full as strong-- blow my keeled soul along To it! Aloft there! What d’ye see? Nothing, sir.

The perfect poise of seasons keep With the tides that rest at neap. So must be fulfilled the rite That giveth me the dead year's might; And at dawn I shall arise A spirit, through with human eyes, A human form and human face; And where'er I go or stay, There the summer's perished grace Shall be with me, night and day.