Hod

[Terrance]

See "The Rocket and the Whale: Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's
Rainbow and Moby-Dick"
 


"What numbers of faithful and free-born Englishmen and good
Christians have been constrained to forsake their dear
dearest home, their friends and kindred, whom nothing but
the wide ocean and the savage deserts of America could hide
and shelter from the fury of the bishops! O, if we could but
see the shape of our dear mother England, as poets are wont
to give a personal form to what they please, how would she
appear, think ye, but in a mourning weed, with ashes upon
her head, and tears  abundantly flowing from her eyes, to
behold so many of her children exposed at once and thrust
from things of dearest necessity, because their conscience
could not assent to things which the bishops thought
indifferent? 

Let the astrologer be dismayed at the portentous blaze of
comets and
impressions in the air, as foretelling troubles and changes
to states; I shall believe there cannot be a more ill-boding
sign to a nation (God turn the omen from us!) than when the
inhabitants, to avoid insufferable grievances at home, are
enforced by heaps to forsake their native country.

                                        John Milton, On
America


I know thee, I have found thee, & I will not let thee go;
Thou art the image of God who dwells in darkness of Africa;
And thou art fall'n to give me life in regions of dark
death. On my American plains I feel the struggling
afflictions Endur'd by roots that writhe their arms into the
nether deep: 
I see a serpent in Canada, who courts me to his
love;  In Mexico an Eagle, and a Lion in Peru; I see a Whale
in the
South-sea, drinking my soul away. O what limb rending pains
I feel. Thy fire & my frost single in howling pains, in
furrows by thy lightnings rent; 
This is eternal death; and this the torment long foretold.

                                William Blake, on America

"America was a gift from the invisible powers, a way of
returning." (GR.722)