Chapter 8 of the classic Moby Dick by Herman Melville, summarized in verse. Read along with us and discuss this chapter or the book as a whole in the comments.
The Pulpit
The preacher, Father Mapple, emerges.
A whaleman grown old, now a minister
in oilskins, weighed heavy with water.
The pulpit towers over this congress.
No stairway can reach it and fit within
the church walls. Mapple climbs a ladder.
The ladder swung as if it were at sea,
for men to pull themselves from the waters
or climb from small craft into greater ships.
He climbs the pulpit as a mariner
would, hand-over-hand,but confidently,
and then raises the ladder behind him.