“A famous American poem”

Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister (1947).

Nabokov’s 1964 introduction to the novel reveals these lines as “a chance selection of iambic incidents culled from the prose of Moby Dick .” The word whalemen is of course a clue.

Searching the text of the novel at Project Gutenberg reveals that these couplets come from chapters five, nine, twelve, and thirty-seven. Nabokov, or his imagined poet, gets a word wrong: Melville’s text reads down , not shown .

A poem made from another writer’s words: it appears that Nabokov was following in the footsteps of M.A. Jenene.

Related reading
All OCA Nabokov posts (Pinboard)