The following is from a work-in-progress called "Moby Dick: a Book Report" in which I read each chapter of Herman Melville's classic novel Moby Dick, and write about what I read.
And now we go to Stubb, the second mate, mending a part of the boat. Unlike the somber inner monologues of Ahab and Starbuck, Stubb's soliloquy is more light-hearted. He begins laughing, and says to himself, "I know not all that may be coming, but be what it will, I'll go to it laughing." And then he sings a silly drinking song to himself:
We'll drink to-night with hearts as light,
To loves as gay and fleeting
As bubbles that swim, on the beaker's brim,
And break on the lips while meeting."
