"Bethink thee of the albatross, whence come those clouds of spi ritual wonderment and pale dread, in which that white phantom sails in all imaginations? Not Coleridge first threw that spell; but God's great, unflattering laureate, Nature"…He remarks in detail: I remember the first albatross I ever saw. It was during a prolonged gale, in waters hard upon the antarctic seas…So that by no possibility could Coleridge's wild Rhyme have had aught to do with those mystical impressions which were mine, when I saw that bird upon our deck."Written in 1851, Moby Dick. H. Melville died an unknown genius in 1891.