Herman Melville
Dawn
[TENOR]
Oh, what a lovely day again! were it a new-made world, and made for a summer-house to the angels, and this morning the first of its throwing open to them, a fairer day could not dawn upon the world

{CHOIR]
Towards the end he sailed into an extraordinary mildness
And anchored in his home and reached his wife
And rode within the harbor of her hand
And went across each morning to an office
As though his occupation were another island

Goodness existed: that was the new knowledge
His terror had to blow itself quite out
To let him see it; but it was the gale had blown him
Past the Cape Horn of sensible success
Which cries: “This rock is Eden. Shipwreck here.”
But deafened him with thunder and confused with lightning:
– The maniac hero hunting like a jewel
The rare ambiguous monster that had maimed his sex
The unexplained survivor breaking off the nightmare –
All that was intricate and false; the truth was simple