Freighting the Whale VIII:Interlude 2

ON THE SEA

John Keats

It keeps eternal whisperings around
Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell
Gluts twice ten thousand caverns, till the spell
Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.
Often 'tis in such gentle temper found,
That scarcely will the very smallest shell
Be moved from where it sometime fell,
When last the winds of Heaven were unbound.
O ye! who have your eye-balls vexed and turned,
Feast them upon the wideness of the sea-
O ye! whose ears are dinned with uproar rude,
Or fed too much with cloying melody-
Sit ye near some old cavern's mouth and brood,
Until ye start, as if the sea-nymphs quired!

***

WHALES WEEP NOT!

DH Lawrence


They say the sea is cold, but the sea contains the hottest blood of all, and the wildest, the most urgent.

All the whales in the wider deeps, hot are they, as they urge
on and on, and dive beneath the icebergs.
The right whales, the sperm whales, the hammer heads, the
killers
there they blow, there they blow, hot wild white breath out
of the sea!
And they rock, and they rock, through the sensual ageless ages
on the depths of the seven seas,
and through the salt they reel with drunk delight
and in the tropics tremble they with love
and roll with massive, strong desire, like gods.
Then the great bull lies up against his bride
in the blue deep bed of the sea,
as mountain pressing on mountain, in the zest of life:
and out of the inward roaring of the inner red ocean of
whale blood
the long tip reaches strong, intense, like the maelstrom tip, and
comes to rest
in the clasp and the soft, wild clutch of a she whale's
fathomless body.
And over the bridge of the whale's strong phallus, linking the
wonder of whales
the burning archangels under the sea keep passing, back and forth,
keep passing, archangels of bliss
from him to her, from her to him, great Cherubim
that wait on whales in mid ocean, suspended in the waves of
the sea
great heaven of whales in the waters, old hierarchies.

And enormous mother whales lie dreaming suckling their whale tender young
and dreaming with strange whale eyes wide open in the waters of the beginning and the end.

And bull~whales gather their women and whale calves in a ring when danger threatens, on the surface of the ceaseless flood and range themselves like great fierce Seraphim facing the threat encircling their huddled monsters of love.
And all this happens in the sea,
in the salt where God is also love, but without words:
and Aphrodite is the wife of whales
most happy, happy she!

and Venus among the fishes skips and is a she dolphin
she is the gay, delighted porpoise sporting with love and the sea she is the female tunny fish, round and happy among the males and dense with happy blood, dark rainbow bliss in the sea.