The Cabin Table, Chapter 34, 'Ahab, My Captain'

Ahab, my captain still moves before me in all his nantucket grimness and shagginess. In this episode, touching emperors and kings, i must not conceal that i have only to do with a poor, old whale hunter like him. And therefore all outward majestical trappings and housings are denied me. O ahab, what shall be grand in thee, it must needs be plucked at from the skies and dived for in the deep.