Speak! apostrophes to a sperm whale's head, to the moon

Estes-Park

According to Merriam-Webster, apostrophe as a literary device means "a speech or address to a person who is not present or to a personified object." Things personified here are the sperm-whale's head in Moby-Dick chapter 70, and the moon in "Scenes Beyond the Western Border."

"Speak, thou vast and venerable head," muttered Ahab, "which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. . . ."  --Moby-Dick, Chapter 70: The Sphynx

Speak! thou pale and silent witness; tell of Earth's throes,—when a continent had birth: tell when the Storm-power chose these solemn mountain-towers, piercing the sky-mists for his throne? and his sublime laboratory of river-feeding rain; his fire-created and blasted, but icy throne! --Scenes Beyond the Western Border, September 1852; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

Like Ahab's apostrophe to that sphinx of a whale's head, the Captain's apostrophe to the moon in Scenes Beyond the Western Border makes reference to a hoary head--in this case the highest peak of the Rocky Mountains, pictured as "the continent's hoary head, the mark for battling thunders, since Lightning brooded over the great deep!"

Links updated 03/01/2020.