Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) by Herman Melville
page 247 of 437 (56%)
page 247 of 437 (56%)
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home.--Stand up, and gaze! From cape to cape, this whole main we see,
is young and froward. And far southward, past this Kanneeda and Vivenza, are haughty, overbearing streams, which at their mouths dam back the ocean, and long refuse to mix their freshness with the foreign brine:--so bold, so strong, so bent on hurling off aggression is this brave main, Kolumbo;--last sought, last found, Mardi's estate, so long kept back;--pray Oro, it be not squandered foolishly. Here lie plantations, held in fee by stout hearts and arms; and boundless fields, that may be had for seeing. Here, your foes are forests, struck down with bloodless maces.--Ho! Mardi's Poor, and Mardi's Strong! ye, who starve or beg; seventh-sons who slave for earth's first-born--here is your home; predestinated yours; Come over, Empire-founders! fathers of the wedded tribes to come!--abject now, illustrious evermore:--Ho: Sinew, Brawn, and Thigh!" "A very fine invocation," said Media, "now Babbalanja, be seated; and tell us whether Dominora and the kings of Porpheero do not own some small portion of this great continent, which just now you poetically pronounced as the spoil of any vagabonds who may choose to settle therein? Is not Kanneeda, Dominora's?" "And was not Vivenza once Dominora's also? And what Vivenza now is, Kanneeda soon must be. I speak not, my lord, as wishful of what I say, but simply as foreknowing it. The thing must come. Vain for Dominora to claim allegiance from all the progeny she spawns. As well might the old patriarch of the flood reappear, and claim the right of rule over all mankind, as descended from the loins of his three roving sons. "'Tis the old law:--the East peoples the West, the West the East; flux and reflux. And time may come, after the rise and fall of nations yet |
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