Never, never land

"Ah! how very doleful is that plaint! Never, never the doleful!"

--from Scenes Beyond the Western Border (August 1852); and (slightly revised) in Scenes and Adventures in the Army.

Scenes Beyond the Western Border
Southern Literary Messenger 18 (August 1852): 506

The revised 1857 version switches prepositions in and with: calm "with which" revised to calm "in which"; "in fairy creations" then becomes "with fairy creations."

It is near midnight. Silence reigns in the desert; but now and then come the cries of wolves from the mountains. They give an almost supernatural tone to these solemn solitudes. The repose which twenty hours of excitement and toil demand, is banished. Hark! how they howl! Be grandly dreary, and ye will be attuned to the heart! Yes, never better to a sentimental girl the gentlest breathings of an AEolian harp. Ah! how very doleful is that plaint! Never, never, the doleful! Give me the placid calm in which the soul may revel with fairy creations, adorned by all the flowers of thought—or proud action, the storm of wild and passionate will. The gilded and painted memory, or fierce oblivion.

MOBY-DICK (1851)

“Great God! but for one single instant show thyself,” cried Starbuck; “never, never wilt thou capture him, old man—  --Chapter 134, The Chase—Second Day.

PIERRE (1852)

Then, swear to me, dear Pierre, that thou wilt never keep a secret from me—no, never, never;—swear!" 1852 first edition, page 49

 Nay, nay, groaned Pierre, never, never, could such syllables be one instant tolerated by her. --page 120

And Pierre felt that never, never would he be able to embrace Isabel with the mere brotherly embrace; --page 193

In the same passage from Scenes Beyond the Western Border (August 1852) with "Never, never", the figurative AEolian harp communicates a "plaint" described as "doleful"; in Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities (first published at the end of July 1852), Isabel's guitar voices her "melancholy plaints":

But the wonderful melodiousness of her grief had touched the secret monochord within his breast, by an apparent magic, precisely similar to that which had moved the stringed tongue of her guitar to respond to the heart-strings of her own melancholy plaints.  --Page 234

THE PIAZZA (1856)

"Oh, sir," tears starting in her eyes, "the first time I looked out of this window, I said 'never, never shall I weary of this.'"  --first story in Melville's The Piazza Tales

muttering thunder

Here we make our camp: the sun shines out brightly, but muttering thunders marshall forth black clouds.... May 1852 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army (with "marshall" corrected to "marshal": "muttering thunders marshal forth black clouds.")

“Hark! The thunder becomes less muttering. It is nearing us, and nearing the earth, too. Hark! One crammed crash! All the vibrations made one by nearness. Another flash. Hold!”  --The Lightning-Rod Man in Putnam's Monthly Magazine 4 (August 1854) and The Piazza Tales.