Haiku of Moby Dick

A computerized search through the Gutenberg plain text Moby Dick; Or, The Whale found approximately two-hundred ten haiku. I've selected what I think are the best. Here then are an unsorted list of twenty-eight haiku of Moby Dick.

  1. Through the breach, they heard
    the waters pour, as mountain
    torrents down a flume.
  2. Pip, whose drowned bones now
    show white, for all the blackness
    of his living skin.
  3. I, who have handled
    so many deadly strange, that
    I should shake so now.
  4. But thou art but my
    fiery father; my sweet
    mother, I know not.
  5. Starbuck caught sight of
    face slowly beginning to
    glimmer into sight.
  6. Where thou tingling
    life; there, exactly there, there
    to a hair, do I.
  7. Whales of a monstrous
    size are oftentimes cast up
    dead upon that shore.
  8. In merchantmen, oil
    for the sailor is more scarce
    than the milk of queens.
  9. There is a wisdom
    that is woe; but there is a
    woe that is madness.

  10. Rose-bud; and this was
    the romantic name of this
    aromatic ship.
  11. Small sword, or broad sword,
    in all its exercises
    boasts nothing like it.
  12. A thin joist of a
    spine never yet upheld a
    full and noble soul.
  13. It is as though the
    forehead of the Sperm Whale were
    paved with horses' hoofs.
  14. Crossing the deck, let
    us now have a good long look
    at the Right Whale's head.
  15. It was unsafe to
    meddle with the corpses and
    ghosts of these creatures.
  16. The red tide now poured
    from all sides of the monster
    like brooks down a hill.
  17. Squid was a thing of
    portents, to it was quite a
    different object.
  18. In length, the common
    sperm measures something over
    two hundred fathoms.
  19. But these knocking whales
    are seldom remarkable
    as faithful essays.
  20. Commodore set sail
    in this impregnable craft
    for Valparaiso.
  21. Hunter, and Lesson,
    those lights of zoology
    and anatomy.
  22. The whale himself has
    never figured in any
    grand imposing way.
  23. It's an outrage to
    tell any human creature
    that he's bound to hell.
  24. West and South. It is
    not down in any map; true
    places never are.
  25. One and all, they were
    and dragged up hither from the
    bottom of the sea.
  26. Abominable
    are the tumblers into which
    he pours his poison.
  27. But that same image,
    we ourselves see in all
    rivers and oceans.
  28. Stand by for the winds
    are just crossing swords, they'll go
    lunging presently.

Compiled by Eli the Bearded, 20 Jun 2014.