Herman Melville- Complete Poems

by Herman Melville

  Still vying with the Victory

  Throughout that earnest race—

  The Victory, whose Admiral,

  With orders nobly won,

  Shone in the globe of the battle glow—

  The angel in that sun.

  Parallel in story,

  Lo, the stately pair,

  As late in grapple ranging,

  The foe between them there—

  When four great hulls lay tiered,

  And the fiery tempest cleared,

  And your prizes twain appeared,

  Temeraire!

  But Trafalgar´ is over now,

  The quarter-deck undone;

  The carved and castled navies fire

  Their evening-gun.

  O, Titan Temeraire,

  Your stern-lights fade away;

  Your bulwarks to the years must yield,

  And heart-of-oak decay.

  A pigmy steam-tug tows you,

  Gigantic, to the shore—

  Dismantled of your guns and spars,

  And sweeping wings of war.

  The rivets clinch the iron-clads,

  Men learn a deadlier lore;

  But Fame has nailed your battle-flags—

  Your ghost it sails before:

  O, the navies old and oaken,

  O, the Temeraire no more!

  A Utilitarian View of the Monitor’s Fight

  PLAIN be the phrase, yet apt the verse,

  More ponderous than nimble;

  For since grimed War here laid aside

  His Orient pomp, ’twould ill befit

  Overmuch to ply

  The rhyme’s barbaric cymbal.

  Hail to victory without the gaud

  Of glory; zeal that needs no fans

  Of banners; plain mechanic power

  Plied cogently in War now placed—

  Where War belongs—

  Among the trades and artisans.

  Yet this was battle, and intense—

  Beyond the strife of fleets heroic;

  Deadlier, closer, calm ’mid storm;

  No passion; all went on by crank,

  Pivot, and screw,

  And calculations of caloric.

  Needless to dwell; the story’s known.

  The ringing of those plates on plates

  Still ringeth round the world—

  The clangor of that blacksmiths’ fray.

  The anvil-din

  Resounds this message from the Fates:

  War yet shall be, and to the end;

  But war-paint shows the streaks of weather;

  War yet shall be, but warriors

  Are now but operatives; War’s made

  Less grand than Peace,

  And a singe runs through lace and feather.

  Shiloh

  A Requiem

  (April, 1862)

  SKIMMING lightly, wheeling still,

  The swallows fly low

  Over the field in clouded days,

  The forest-field of Shiloh—

  Over the field where April rain

  Solaced the parched ones stretched in pain

  Through the pause of night

  That followed the Sunday fight

  Around the church of Shiloh—

  The church so lone, the log-built one,

  That echoed to many a parting groan

  And natural prayer

  Of dying foemen mingled there—

  Foemen at morn, but friends at eve—

  Fame or country least their care:

  (What like a bullet can undeceive!)

  But now they lie low,

  While over them the swallows skim,

  And all is hushed at Shiloh.

  The Battle for the Mississippi

  (April, 1862)

  WHEN Israel camped by Migdol hoar,

  Down at her feet her shawm she threw,

  But Moses sung and timbrels rung

  For Pharaoh’s stranded crew.

  So God appears in apt events—

  The Lord is a man of war!

  So the strong wing to the muse is given

  In victory’s roar.

  Deep be the ode that hymns the fleet—

  The fight by night—the fray

  Which bore our Flag against the powerful stream,

  And led it up to day.

  Dully through din of larger strife

  Shall bay that warring gun;

  But none the less to us who live

  It peals—an echoing one.

  The shock of ships, the jar of walls,

  The rush through thick and thin—

  The flaring fire-rafts, glare and gloom—

  Eddies, and shells that spin—

  The boom-chain burst, the hulks dislodged,

  The jam of gun-boats driven,

  Or fired, or sunk—made up a war

  Like Michael’s waged with leven.

  The manned Varuna stemmed and quelled

  The odds which hard beset;

  The oaken flag-ship, half ablaze,

  Passed on and thundered yet;

  While foundering, gloomed in grimy flame,

  The Ram Manassas—hark the yell!—

  Plunged, and was gone; in joy or fright,

  The River gave a startled swell.

  They fought through lurid dark till dawn;

  The war-smoke rolled away

  With clouds of night, and showed the fleet

  In scarred yet firm array,

  Above the forts, above the drift

  Of wrecks which strife had made;

  And Farragut sailed up to the town

  And anchored—sheathed the blade.

  The moody broadsides, brooding deep,

  Hold the lewd mob at bay,

  While o’er the armed decks’ solemn aisles

  The meek church-pennons play;

  By shotted guns the sailors stand,

  With foreheads bound or bare;

  The captains and the conquering crews

  Humble their pride in prayer.

  They pray; and after victory, prayer

  Is meet for men who mourn their slain;

  The living shall unmoor and sail,

  But Death’s dark anchor secret deeps detain.

  Yet Glory slants her shaft of rays

  Far through the undisturbed abyss;

  There must be other, nobler worlds for them

  Who nobly yield their lives in this.

  Malvern Hill

  (July, 1862)

  YE elms that wave on Malvern Hill

  In prime of morn and May,

  Recall ye how McClellan’s men

  Here stood at bay?

  While deep within yon forest dim

  Our rigid comrades lay—

  Some with the cartridge in their mouth,

  Others with fixed arms lifted South—

  Invoking so

  The cypress glades? Ah wilds of woe!

  The spires of Richmond, late beheld

  Through rifts in musket-haze,

  Were closed from view in clouds of dust

  On leaf-walled ways,

  Where streamed our wagons in caravan;

  And the Seven Nights and Days

  Of march and fast, retreat and fight,

  Pinched our grimed faces to ghastly plight—

  Does the elm wood

  Recall the haggard beards of blood?

 
The battle-smoked flag, with stars eclipsed,

  We followed (it never fell!)—

  In silence husbanded our strength—

  Received their yell;

  Till on this slope we patient turned

  With cannon ordered well;

  Reverse we proved was not defeat;

  But ah, the sod what thousands meet!—

  Does Malvern Wood

  Bethink itself, and muse and brood?

  We elms of Malvern Hill

  Remember every thing;

  But sap the twig will fill:

  Wag the world how it will,

  Leaves must be green in Spring.

  The Victor of Antietam e

  (1862)

  WHEN tempest winnowed grain from bran,

  And men were looking for a man,

  Authority called you to the van,

  McClellan:

  Along the line the plaudit ran,

  As later when Antietam’s cheers began.

  Through storm-cloud and eclipse must move

  Each Cause and Man, dear to the stars and Jove;

  Nor always can the wisest tell

  Deferred fulfillment from the hopeless knell—

  The struggler from the floundering ne’er-do-well.

  A pall-cloth on the Seven Days fell,

  McClellan—

  Unprosperously heroical!

  Who could Antietam’s wreath foretell?

  Authority called you; then, in mist

  And loom of jeopardy—dismissed.

  But staring peril soon appalled;

  You, the Discarded, she recalled—

  Recalled you, nor endured delay;

  And forth you rode upon a blasted way,

  Arrayed Pope’s rout, and routed Lee’s array,

  McClellan:

  Your tent was choked with captured flags that day,

  McClellan.

  Antietam was a telling fray.

  Recalled you; and she heard your drum

  Advancing through the ghastly gloom.

  You manned the wall, you propped the Dome,

  You stormed the powerful stormer home,

  McClellan:

  Antietam’s cannon long shall boom.

  At Alexandria, left alone,

  McClellan—

  Your veterans sent from you, and thrown

  To fields and fortunes all unknown—

  What thoughts were yours, revealed to none,

  While faithful still you labored on—

  Hearing the far Manassas gun!

  McClellan,

  Only Antietam could atone.

  You fought in the front (an evil day,

  McClellan)—

  The fore-front of the first assay;

  The Cause went sounding, groped its way;

  The leadsmen quarrelled in the bay;

  Quills thwarted swords; divided sway;

  The rebel flushed in his lusty May:

  You did your best, as in you lay,

  McClellan.

  Antietam’s sun-burst sheds a ray.

  Your medalled soldiers love you well,

  McClellan:

  Name your name, their true hearts swell;

  With you they shook dread Stonewall’s spell,f

  With you they braved the blended yell

  Of rebel and maligner fell;

  With you in shame or fame they dwell,

  McClellan:

  Antietam-braves a brave can tell.

  And when your comrades (now so few,

  McClellan—

  Such ravage in deep files they rue)

  Meet round the board, and sadly view

  The empty places; tribute due

  They render to the dead—and you!

  Absent and silent o’er the blue;

  The one-armed lift the wine to you,

  McClellan,

  And great Antietam’s cheers renew.

  Battle of Stone River, Tennessee

  A View from Oxford Cloisters

  (January, 1863)

  WITH Tewksbury and Barnet heath

  In days to come the field shall blend,

  The story dim and date obscure;

  In legend all shall end.

  Even now, involved in forest shade

  A Druid-dream the strife appears,

  The fray of yesterday assumes

  The haziness of years.

  In North and South still beats the vein

  Of Yorkist and Lancastrian.

  Our rival Roses warred for Sway—

  For Sway, but named the name of Right;

  And Passion, scorning pain and death,

  Lent sacred fervor to the fight.

  Each lifted up a broidered cross,

  While crossing blades profaned the sign;

  Monks blessed the fratricidal lance,

  And sisters scarfs could twine.

  Do North and South the sin retain

  Of Yorkist and Lancastrian?

  But Rosecrans in the cedarn glade,

  And, deep in denser cypress gloom,

  Dark Breckinridge, shall fade away

  Or thinly loom.

  The pale throngs who in forest cowed

  Before the spell of battle’s pause,

  Forefelt the stillness that shall dwell

  On them and on their wars.

  North and South shall join the train

  Of Yorkist and Lancastrian.

  But where the sword has plunged so deep,

  And then been turned within the wound

  By deadly Hate; where Climes contend

  On vasty ground—

  No warning Alps or seas between,

  And small the curb of creed or law,

  And blood is quick, and quick the brain;

  Shall North and South their rage deplore,

  And reunited thrive amain

  Like Yorkist and Lancastrian?

  Running the Batteries

  As observed from the Anchorage above Vicksburgh

  (April, 1863)

  A MOONLESS night—a friendly one;

  A haze dimmed the shadowy shore

  As the first lampless boat slid silent on;

  Hist! and we spake no more;

  We but pointed, and stilly, to what we saw.

  We felt the dew, and seemed to feel

  The secret like a burden laid.

  The first boat melts; and a second keel

  Is blent with the foliaged shade—

  Their midnight rounds have the rebel officers made?

  Unspied as yet. A third—a fourth—

  Gun-boat and transport in Indian file

  Upon the war-path, smooth from the North;

  But the watch may they hope to beguile?

  The manned river-batteries stretch for mile on mile.

  A flame leaps out; they are seen;

  Another and another gun roars;

  We tell the course of the boats through the screen

  By each further fort that pours,

  And we guess how they jump from their beds on those

  shrouded shores.

  Converging fires. We speak, though low:

  “That blastful furnace can they thread?”

  “Why, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego

  Came out all right, we read;

  The Lord, be sure, he helps his people, Ned.”

  How we strain our gaze. On bluffs they shun

  A golden growing flame appears—

 
Confirms to a silvery steadfast one:

  “The town is afire!” crows Hugh: “three cheers!”

  Lot stops his mouth: “Nay, lad, better three tears.”

  A purposed light; it shows our fleet;

  Yet a little late in its searching ray,

  So far and strong, that in phantom cheat

  Lank on the deck our shadows lay;

  The shining flag-ship stings their guns to furious play.

  How dread to mark her near the glare

  And glade of death the beacon throws

  Athwart the racing waters there;

  One by one each plainer grows,

  Then speeds a blazoned target to our gladdened foes.

  The impartial cresset lights as well

  The fixed forts to the boats that run;

  And, plunged from the ports, their answers swell

  Back to each fortress dun:

  Ponderous words speaks every monster gun.

  Fearless they flash through gates of flame,

  The salamanders hard to hit,

  Though vivid shows each bulky frame;

  And never the batteries intermit,

  Nor the boats’ huge guns; they fire and flit.

  Anon a lull. The beacon dies:

  “Are they out of that strait accurst?”

  But other flames now dawning rise,

  Not mellowly brilliant like the first,

  But rolled in smoke, whose whitish volumes burst.

  A baleful brand, a hurrying torch

  Whereby anew the boats are seen—

  A burning transport all alurch!

  Breathless we gaze; yet still we glean

  Glimpses of beauty as we eager lean.

  The effulgence takes an amber glow

  Which bathes the hill-side villas far;

  Affrighted ladies mark the show

  Painting the pale magnolia—

  The fair, false, Circe light of cruel War.

  The barge drifts doomed, a plague-struck one.

  Shoreward in yawls the sailors fly.