My review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3447153622

Other poets have warbled the praises of the soft eye of the antelope, and the lovely plumage of the bird that never alights; less celestial, I celebrate a tail. …

In no living thing are the lines of beauty more exquisitely defined than in the crescentic borders of these flukes. At its utmost expansion in the full grown whale, the tail will considerably exceed twenty feet across. …

its amazing strength, … the graceful flexion of its motions; where infantileness of ease undulates through a Titanism of power. … Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it; and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic.

when he is about to plunge into the deeps, his entire flukes with at least thirty feet of his body are tossed erect in the air, and so remain vibrating a moment, till they downwards shoot out of view. …

this peaking of the whale’s flukes is perhaps the grandest sight to be seen in all animated nature.