that hamper.

And like a frigate, I am full with a thousand souls; and as on, on,
on, I scud before the wind, many mariners rush up from the orlop
below, like miners from caves; running shouting across my decks;
opposite braces are pulled; and this way and that, the great yards
swing round on their axes; and boisterous speaking-trumpets are heard;
and contending orders, to save the good ship from the shoals. Shoals,
like nebulous vapors, shoreing the white reef of the Milky Way,
against which the wrecked worlds are dashed; strewing all the strand,
with their Himmaleh keels and ribs.

Ay: many, many souls are in me. In my tropical calms, when my ship
lies tranced on Eternity's main, speaking one at a time, then all with
one voice: an orchestra of many French bugles and horns, rising, and
falling, and swaying, in golden calls and responses.

Sometimes, when these Atlantics and Pacifics thus undulate round me, I
lie stretched out in their midst: a land-locked Mediterranean, knowing
no ebb, nor flow. Then again, I am dashed in the spray of these sounds:
an eagle at the world's end, tossed skyward, on the horns of the tempest.

Yet, again, I descend, and list to the concert.

Like a grand, ground swell, Homer's old organ rolls its vast volumes
under the light frothy wave-crests of Anacreon and Hafiz; and high
over my ocean, sweet Shakespeare soars, like all the larks of the
spring. Throned on my seaside, like Canute, bearded Ossian smites his
hoar harp, wreathed with wild-flowers, in which warble my Wallers;
blind Milton sings bass to my Petrarchs and Priors, and laureate crown
me with bays.

In me, many worthies recline, and converse. I list to St. Paul who
argues the doubts of Montaigne; Julian the Apostate cross-questions
Augustine; and Thomas-a-Kempis unrolls his old black letters for all
to decipher. Zeno murmurs maxims beneath the hoarse shout of
Democritus; and though Democritus laugh loud and long, and the sneer
of Pyrrho be seen; yet, divine Plato, and Proclus, and, Verulam are of
my counsel; and Zoroaster whispered me before I was born. I walk a
world that is mine; and enter many nations, as Mingo Park rested in
African cots; I am served like Bajazet: Bacchus my butler, Virgil my
minstrel, Philip Sidney my page. My memory is a life beyond birth; my
memory, my library of the Vatican, its alcoves all endless
perspectives, eve-tinted by cross-lights from Middle-Age oriels.

And as the great Mississippi muster