I am a rather elderly man. The nature of my avocations, for the last thirty years, has brought me into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting and somewhat singular set of men, ...

In all parts of the world many high-spirited revolts from rascally despotisms had of late been knocked on the head; many dreadful casualties, by locomotive and steamer, had likewise knocked hundreds o...

—“That may not be, said then the ferryman, Least we unweeting hap to be fordonne; For those same islands seeming now and than, Are not firme land, nor any certein wonne, But stragling plots which to a...

—“That may not be, said then the ferryman, Least we unweeting hap to be fordonne; For those same islands seeming now and than, Are not firme land, nor any certein wonne, But stragling plots which to a...

“Most ugly shapes and horrible aspects, Such as Dame Nature selfe mote feare to see, Or shame, that ever should so fowle defects From her most cunning hand escaped bee; All dreadfull pourtraicts of de...

“For they this tight the Rock of vile Reproach, A dangerous and dreadful place, To which nor fish nor fowl did once approach, But yelling meaws with seagulls hoars and bace And cormoyrants with birds ...

—“That done, he leads him to the highest mount, From whence, far off he unto him did show:”⁠— If you seek to ascend Rock Rodondo, take the following prescription. Go three voyages round the world as a...

“Looking far forth into the ocean wide, A goodly ship with banners bravely dight, And flag in her topgallant I espide, Through the main sea making her merry flight.” Ere quitting Rodondo, it must not ...

“Let us all servile base subjection scorn, And as we be sons of the earth so wide, Let us our father’s heritage divide, And challenge to ourselves our portions dew Of all the patrimony, which a few ho...

—So with outragious cry, A thousand villeins round about him swarmed Out of the rocks and caves adjoining nye; Vile caitive wretches, ragged, rude, deformed; All threatning death, all in straunge mann...

“At last they in an island did espy A seemly woman sitting by the shore, That with great sorrow and sad agony Seemed some great misfortune to deplore; And loud to them for succor called evermore.” “Bl...

“That darkesome glen they enter, where they find That cursed man low sitting on the ground, Musing full sadly in his sullein mind; His griesly lockes long gronen and unbound, Disordered hong about his...

“And all about old stocks and stubs of trees, Whereon nor fruit nor leaf was ever seen, Did hang upon ragged knotty knees, On which had many wretches hanged been.” Some relics of the hut of Oberlus pa...

“You see,” said poet Blandmour, enthusiastically⁠—as some forty years ago we walked along the road in a soft, moist snowfall, toward the end of March⁠—“you see, my friend, that the blessed almoner, Na...

“You see,” said poet Blandmour, enthusiastically⁠—as some forty years ago we walked along the road in a soft, moist snowfall, toward the end of March⁠—“you see, my friend, that the blessed almoner, Na...

In the year 1814, during the summer following my first taste of the “Poor Man’s Pudding,” a sea-voyage was recommended to me by my physician. The Battle of Waterloo having closed the long drama of Nap...

The appointment was that I should meet my elderly uncle at the riverside, precisely at nine in the morning. The skiff was to be ready, and the apparatus to be brought down by his grizzled old black ma...

What grand irregular thunder, thought I, standing on my hearthstone among the Acroceraunian hills, as the scattered bolts boomed overhead, and crashed down among the valleys, every bolt followed by zi...

So my poem is damned, and immortal fame is not for me! I am nobody forever and ever. Intolerable fate! Snatching my hat, I dashed down the criticism and rushed out into Broadway, where enthusiastic th...

It lies not far from Temple-Bar. Going to it, by the usual way, is like stealing from the heated plain into some cool, deep glen, shady among the harboring hills. Sick with the din and soiled with the...

It lies not far from Temple-Bar. Going to it, by the usual way, is like stealing from the heated plain into some cool, deep glen, shady among the harboring hills. Sick with the din and soiled with the...

It lies not far from Woedolor Mountain in New England. Turning to the east, right out from among bright farms and sunny meadows, nodding in early June with odorous grasses, you enter ascendingly among...

In the south of Europe, nigh a once frescoed capital, now with dank mould cankering its bloom, central in a plain, stands what, at distance, seems the black mossed stump of some immeasurable pine, fal...

In the year 1799, Captain Amasa Delano, of Duxbury, in Massachusetts, commanding a large sealer and general trader, lay at anchor with a valuable cargo, in the harbor of St. Maria⁠—a small, desert, un...

A time ago, no matter how long precisely, I, an old man, removed from the country to the city, having become unexpected heir to a great old house in a narrow street of one of the lower wards, once the...

In relating to my friends various passages of my sea-goings I have at times had occasion to allude to that singular people the ’Gees, sometimes as casual acquaintances, sometimes as shipmates. Such al...

I and my chimney, two grey-headed old smokers, reside in the country. We are, I may say, old settlers here; particularly my old chimney, which settles more and more every day. Though I always say, “I ...

When I first saw the table, dingy and dusty, in the furthest corner of the old hopper-shaped garret, and set out with broken, be-crusted old purple vials and flasks, and a ghostly, dismantled old quar...

When I removed into the country, it was to occupy an old-fashioned farmhouse, which had no piazza⁠—a deficiency the more regretted, because not only did I like piazzas, as somehow combining the cozine...

Dedicated to Jack Chase Englishman Wherever that great heart may now be here on earth or harboured in paradise Captain of the Main-Top in the year 1843 in the U.S. frigate United States The year 1797,...

The year 1797, the year of this narrative, belongs to a period which, as every thinker now feels, involved a crisis for Christendom, not exceeded in its undetermined momentousness at the time by any o...

In the time before steamships, or then more frequently than now, a stroller along the docks of any considerable seaport would occasionally have his attention arrested by a group of bronzed marines, ma...

Though our new-made foretopman was well received in the top and on the gun-decks, hardly here was he that cynosure he had previously been among those minor ships’ companies of the merchant marine, wit...

At the time of Billy Budd’s arbitrary enlistment into the Indomitable that ship was on her way to join the Mediterranean fleet. No long time elapsed before the junction was effected. As one of that fl...

In this matter of writing, resolve as one may to keep to the main road, some bypaths have an enticement not readily to be withstood. Beckoned by the genius of Nelson I am going to err into such a bypa...

The outbreak at the Nore was put down. But not every grievance was redressed. If the contractors, for example, were no longer permitted to ply some practices peculiar to their tribe everywhere, such a...

In view of the part that the commander of the Indomitable plays in scenes shortly to follow, it may be well to fill out that sketch of him outlined in the previous chapter. Aside from his qualities as...

The lieutenants and other commissioned gentlemen forming Captain Vere’s staff it is not necessary here to particularise, nor needs it to make mention of any of the warrant-officers. But among the pett...

Life in the foretop well agreed with Billy Budd. There, when not actually engaged on the yards yet higher aloft, the topmen, who as such had been picked out for youth and activity, constituted an aeri...

The next day an incident served to confirm Billy Budd in his incredulity as to the Dansker’s strange summing-up of the case submitted. The ship at noon going large before the wind was rolling on her c...

What was the matter with the master-at-arms? And be the matter what it might, how could it have direct relation to Billy Budd, with whom prior to the affair of the spilled soup he had never come into ...

That Claggart’s figure was not amiss, and his face, save the chin, well moulded, has already been said. Of these favourable points he seemed not insensible, for he was not only neat but careful in his...

Not many days after the last incident narrated, something befell Billy Budd that more gravelled him than aught that had previously occurred. It was a warm night for the latitude; and the foretopman, w...

This incident sorely puzzled Billy Budd. It was an entirely new experience; the first time in his life that he had ever been personally approached in underhand intriguing fashion. Prior to this encoun...

Long experience had very likely brought this old man to that bitter prudence which never interferes in aught, and never gives advice. Yet, despite the Dansker’s pithy insistence as to the master-at-ar...

But after the little matter at the mess Billy Budd no more found himself in strange trouble at times about his hammock or his clothes-bag, or whatnot. While, as to that smile that occasionally sunned ...

After the mysterious interview in the fore-chains, the one so abruptly ended there by Billy, nothing especially germane to the story occurred until the events now about to be narrated. Elsewhere it ha...

Now when the foretopman found himself closeted, as it were, in the cabin with the captain and Claggart, he was surprised enough. But it was a surprise unaccompanied by apprehension or distrust. To an ...

The unhappy event which has been narrated could not have happened at a worse juncture. For it was close on the heel of the suppressed insurrections, an after-time very critical to naval authority, dem...

It was Captain Vere himself who of his own motion communicated the finding of the court to the prisoner; for that purpose going to the compartment where he was in custody, and bidding the marine there...

In a seventy-four of the old order the deck known as the upper gun-deck was the one covered over by the spar-deck, which last, though not without its armament, was for the most part exposed to the wea...

If in vain the good chaplain sought to impress the young barbarian with ideas of death akin to those conveyed in the skull, dial, and crossbones on old tombstones; equally futile to all appearance wer...

The night so luminous on the spar-deck (otherwise on the cavernous ones below⁠—levels so like the tiered galleries in a coal-mine) passed away. Like the prophet in the chariot disappearing in heaven a...

When some days afterwards in reference to the singularity just mentioned, the purser, a rather ruddy, rotund person, more accurate as an accountant than profound as a philosopher, said at mess to the ...

The silence at the moment of execution, and for a moment or two continuing thereafter, but emphasised by the regular wash of the sea against the hull, or the flutter of a sail caused by the helmsman’s...

The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction cannot so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than with fact. Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its r...

Some few weeks after the execution, among other matters under the head of News from the Mediterranean, there appeared in a naval chronicle of the time, an authorised weekly publication, an account of ...

Everything is for a season remarkable in navies. Any tangible object associated with some striking incident of the service, is converted into a monument. The spar from which the foretopman was suspend...

A profound portrait-painter like Titian or our famous countryman Stewart, what such an observer sees in any face he may earnestly study, that essentially is the man. To disentangle his true history fr...

Dedicated to Sheridan Knowles “This is too bad,” said I, “here have I tramped this blessed Sunday morning, all the way from the Battery, three long miles, for this express purpose, prayerbook under ar...

“This is too bad,” said I, “here have I tramped this blessed Sunday morning, all the way from the Battery, three long miles, for this express purpose, prayerbook under arm; here I am, I say, and, afte...

A stranger in London on Saturday night and without a copper! What hospitalities may such an one expect? What shall I do with myself this weary night? My landlady won’t receive me in her parlour. I owe...

The American Spaniards have long been in the habit of making presents of islands to deserving individuals. The pilot Juan Fernandez procured a deed of the isle named after him, and for some years resi...