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HERMAN MELVILLE, by             Poem Explanation     Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: He was always surrounded by the sea of his elders
Last Line: And the abomination of the whiteness. %it is the great book. It is the blue proteus


The pilot of the Antarctic
Wrote at the end of his life
A long letter to a friend.
He who had been the hunted, the exile, the fugitive,
Was now happy, surrounded by books.
I think of him as I read,
Of his ambiguous seas,
Of the whale and the island
That were his fate,
And of his house in the dust of Illinois
With the books and the old weapons.






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