Herman Melville- Complete Poems

by Herman Melville

  I do but trill it for the air;

  ’Tis anything as down we fare.”

  Enough; Rolfe let him have his way;

  Yes, there he let the matter stay.

  And so, with mutual good-will shown,

  They parted.

  For l’envoy anon

  They heard his lilting voice impel

  Among the crags this versicle:

  “With a rose in thy mouth

  Through the world lightly veer:

  Rose in the mouth

  Makes a rose of the year!”

  Then, after interval again,

  But fainter, further in the strain:

  “With the Prince of the South

  O’er the Styx bravely steer:

  Rose in the mouth

  And a wreath on the bier!”

  Chord deeper now that touched within.

  Listening, they at each other look;

  Some charitable hope they brook,

  Yes, vague belief they fondly win

  That heaven would brim his happy years

  Nor time mature him into tears.

  And Vine in heart of revery saith:

  Like any flute inspired with breath

  Pervasive, and which duly renders

  Unconscious in melodious play,

  Whate’er the light musician tenders;

  So warblest thou lay after lay

  Scarce self-derived; and (shroud before)

  Down goest singing toward Death’s Sea,

  Where lies aloof our pilgrim hoar

  In pit thou’lt pass. Ah, young to be!

  5. THE HIGH DESERT

  Where silence and the legend dwell,

  A cleft in Horeb is, they tell,

  Through which upon one happy day

  (The sun on his heraldic track

  Due sign having gained in Zodiac)

  A sunbeam darts, which slants away

  Through ancient carven oriel

  Or window in the Convent there,

  Illuming so with annual flush

  The somber vaulted chamber spare

  Of Catherine’s Chapel of the Bush—

  The Burning Bush. Brief visitant,

  It makes no lasting covenant;

  It brings, but cannot leave, the ray.

  To hearts which here the desert smote

  So came, so went the Cypriote.

  Derwent deep felt it; and, as fain

  His prior spirits to regain;

  Impatient too of scenes which led

  To converse such as late was bred,

  Moved to go on. But some declined.

  So, for relief to heart which pined,

  Belex he sought, by him sat down

  In cordial ease upon a stone

  Apart, and heard his stories free

  Of Ibrahim’s wild infantry.

  The rest abide. To these there comes,

  As down on Siddim’s scene they peer,

  The contrast of their vernal homes—

  Field, orchard, and the harvest cheer.

  At variance in their revery move

  The spleen of nature and her love:

  At variance, yet entangled too—

  Like wrestlers. Here in apt review

  They call to mind Abel and Cain­

  Ormuzd involved with Ahriman

  In deadly lock. Were those gods gone?

  Or under other names lived on?

  The theme they started. ’Twas averred

  That, in old Gnostic pages blurred,

  Jehovah was construed to be

  Author of evil, yea, its god;

  And Christ divine his contrary:

  A god was held against a god,

  But Christ revered alone. Herefrom,

  If inference availeth aught

  (For still the topic pressed they home)

  The two-fold Testaments become

  Transmitters of Chaldaic thought

  By implication. If no more

  Those Gnostic heretics prevail

  Which shook the East from shore to shore,

  Their strife forgotten now and pale;

  Yet, with the sects, that old revolt

  Now reappears, if in assault

  Less frank: none say Jehovah’s evil,

  None gainsay that he bears the rod;

  Scarce that; but there’s dismission civil,

  And Jesus is the indulgent God.

  This change, this dusking change that slips

  (Like the penumbra o’er the sun),

  Over the faith transmitted down;

  Foreshadows it complete eclipse?

  Science and Faith, can these unite?

  Or is that priestly instinct right

  (Right as regards conserving still

  The Church’s reign) whose strenuous will

  Made Galileo pale recite

  The Penitential Psalms in vest

  Of sackcloth; which to-day would blight

  Those potent solvents late expressed

  In laboratories of the West?

  But in her Protestant repose

  Snores faith toward her mortal close?

  Nay, like a sachem petrified,

  Encaved found in the mountain-side,

  Perfect in feature, true in limb,

  Life’s full similitude in him,

  Yet all mere stone—is faith dead now,

  A petrifaction? Grant it so,

  Then what’s in store? what shapeless birth?

  Reveal the doom reserved for earth?

  How far may seas retiring go?

  But, to redeem us, shall we say

  That faith, undying, does but range,

  Casting the skin—the creed. In change

  Dead always does some creed delay—

  Dead, not interred, though hard upon

  Interment’s brink? At Saint Denis

  Where slept the Capets, sire and son,

  Eight centuries of lineal clay,

  On steps that led down into vault

  The prince inurned last made a halt,

  The coffin left they there, ’tis said,

  Till the inheritor was dead;

  Then, not till then ’twas laid away.

  But if no more the creeds be linked,

  If the long line’s at last extinct,

  If time both creed and faith betray,

  Vesture and vested—yet again

  What interregnum or what reign

  Ensues? Or does a period come?

  The Sibyl’s books lodged in the tomb?

  Shall endless time no more unfold

  Of truth at core? Some things discerned

  By the far Noahs of lndia old—

  Earth’s first spectators, the clear-eyed,

  Unvitiated, unfalsified

  Seers at first hand—shall these be learned

  Though late, even by the New World, say,

  Which now contemns?

  But what shall stay

  The fever of advance? London immense

  Still wax for aye? A check: but whence?

  How of the teeming Prairie-Land?

  There shall the plenitude expand

  Unthinned, unawed? Or does it need

  Only that men should breed and breed

  To enrich those forces into play

  Which in past times could oversway

  Pride at his proudest? Do they come,

  The locusts, only to the bloom?

  Prosperity sire them?

  Thus they swept,

  Nor sequence held, co
nsistent tone—

  Imagination wildering on

  Through vacant halls which faith once kept

  With ushers good.

  Themselves thus lost,

  At settled hearts they wonder most.

  For those (they asked) who still adhere

  In homely habit’s dull delay,

  To dreams dreamed out or passed away;

  Do these, our pagans, all appear

  Much like each poor and busy one

  Who when the Tartar took Pekin,

  (If credence hearsay old may win)

  Knew not the fact—so vast the town,

  The multitude, the maze, the din?

  Still laggeth in deferred adieu

  The A. D. (Anno Domini)

  Overlapping into era new

  Even as the Roman A. U. C.

  Yet ran for time, regardless all

  That Christ was born, and after fall

  Of Rome itself?

  But now our age,

  So infidel in equipage,

  While carrying still the Christian name—

  For all its self-asserted claim,

  How fares it, tell? Can the age stem

  Its own conclusions? is’t a king

  Awed by his conquests which enring

  With menaces his diadem?

  Bright visions of the times to be—

  Must these recoil, ere long be cowed

  Before the march in league avowed

  Of Mammon and Democracy?

  In one result whereto we tend

  Shall Science disappoint the hope,

  Yea, to confound us in the end,

  New doors to superstition ope?

  As years, as years and annals grow,

  And action and reaction vie,

  And never men attain, but know

  How waves on waves forever die;

  Does all more enigmatic show?

  So they; and in the vain appeal

  Persisted yet, as ever still

  Blown back in sleet that blinds the eyes,

  Not less the fervid Geysers rise.

  Clarel meantime ungladdened bent

  Regardful, and the more intent

  For silence held. At whiles his eye

  Lit on the Druze, reclined half prone,

  The long pipe resting on the stone

  And wreaths of vapor floating by—

  The man and pipe in peace as one.

  How clear the profile, clear and true;

  And he so tawny. Bust ye view,

  Antique, in alabaster brown,

  Might show like that. There, all aside,

  How passionless he took for bride

  The calm—the calm, but not the dearth—

  The dearth or waste; nor would he fall

  In waste of words, that waste of all.

  For Vine, from that unchristened earth

  Bits he picked up of porous stone,

  And crushed in fist: or one by one,

  Through the dull void of desert air,

  He tossed them into valley down;

  Or pelted his own shadow there;

  Nor sided he with anything:

  By fits, indeed, he wakeful looked;

  But, in the main, how ill he brooked

  That weary length of arguing—

  Like tale interminable told

  In Hades by some gossip old

  To while the never-ending night.

  Apart he went. Meantime, like kite

  On Sidon perched, which doth enfold,

  Slowly exact, the noiseless wing:

  Each wrinkled Arab Bethlehemite,

  Or trooper of the Arab ring,

  With look of Endor’s withered sprite

  Slant peered on them from lateral hight;

  While unperturbed over deserts riven,

  Stretched the clear vault of hollow heaven.

  6. DERWENT

  At night upon the darkling main

  To ship return with muffled sound

  The rowers without comment vain—

  The messmate overboard not found:

  So, baffled in deep quest but late,

  These on the mountain.

  But from chat

  With Belex in campaigning mood,

  Derwent drew nigh. The sight of him

  Ruffled the Swede—evoked a whim

  Which took these words: “O, well bestowed!

  Hither and help us, man of God:

  Doctor of consolation, here!

  Be warned though: truth won’t docile be

  To codes of good society.”

  Allowing for pain’s bitter jeer,

  Or hearing but in part perchance,

  The comely cleric pilgrim came

  With what he might of suiting frame,

  And air approaching nonchalance;

  And “How to serve you, friends?” he said.

  “Ah, that!” cried Rolfe; “for we, misled,

  We peer from brinks of all we know;

  Our eyes are blurred against the haze:

  Canst help us track in snow on snow

  The footprint of the Ancient of Days?”

  “Scarce without snow-shoes;” Derwent mild

  In gravity; “But come; we’ve whiled

  The time; up then, and let us go.”

  “Delay,” said Mortmain; “stay, roseace:

  What word is thine for sinking heart,

  What is thy wont in such a case,

  Who sends for thee to act thy part

  Consoling—not in life’s last hour

  Indeed—but when some deprivation sore

  Unnerves, and every hope lies flat?”

  That troubled Derwent, for the tone

  Brake into tremble unbeknown

  E’en to the speaker. Down he sat

  Beside them: “Well, if such one—nay!

  But never yet such sent for me—

  I mean, none in that last degree;

  Assume it though: to him I’d say—

  ‘The less in hand the more in store,

  Dear friend.’ No formula I’d trace,

  But honest comfort face to face;

  And, yes, with tonic strong I’d brace,

  Closing with cheerful Paul in lore

  Of text—Rejoice ye evermore.”

  The Swede here of a sudden drooped,

  A hump dropped on him, one would say;

  He reached and some burnt gravel scooped,

  Then stared down on the plain away.

  The priest in fidget moved to part.

  “Abide,” said Mortmain with a start;

  “Abide, for more I yet would know:

  Is God an omnipresent God?

  Is He in Siddim yonder? No?

  If anywhere He’s disavowed

  How think to shun the final schism—

  Blind elements, flat atheism?”

  Whereto the priest: “Far let it be

  That ground where Durham’s prelate stood

  Who saw no proof that God was good

  But only righteous.—Woe is me!

  These controversies. Oft I’ve said

  That never, never would I be led

  Into their maze of vanity.

  Behead me—rid me of pride’s part

  And let me live but by the heart!”

  “Hast proved thy heart? first prove it. Stay:

  The Bible, tell me, is it true,

  And thence deriv’st thy flattering view?”

  But Derwent glanced aside, as vexed;

  Inly assured
, nor less perplexed

  How to impart; and grieved too late

  At being drawn within the strait

  Of vexed discussion: nor quite free

  From ill conjecture, that the Swede,

  Though no dissembler, yet indeed

  Part played on him: “Why question me?

  Why pound the text? Ah, modern be,

  And share the truth’s munificence.

  Look now, one reasons thus: Immense

  Is tropic India; hence she breeds

  Brahma tremendous, gods like seeds.

  The genial clime of Hellas gay

  Begat Apollo. Take that way;

  Nor query—Ramayana true?

  The Iliad?”

  Mortmain nothing said,

  But lumped his limbs and sunk his head.

  Then Rolfe to Derwent: “But the Jew:

  Since clime and country, as you own,

  So much effect, how with the Jew

  Herein?”

  There Derwent sat him down

  Afresh, well pleased and leisurely,

  As one in favorite theory

  Invoked: “That bondman from his doom

  By Nile, and subsequent distress,

  With punishment in wilderness,

  Methinks he brought an added gloom

  To nature here. Here church and state

  He founded—would perpetuate

  Exclusive and withdrawn. But no:

  Advancing years prohibit rest;

  All turns or alters for the best.

  Time ran; and that expansive light

  Of Greeks about the bordering sea,

  Their happy genial spirits bright,

  Wit, grace urbane, amenity

  Contagious, and so hard to ban

  By bigot law, or any plan;

  These influences stole their way,

  Affecting here and there a Jew;

  Likewise the Magi tincture too

  Derived from the Captivity:

  Hence Hillel’s fair reforming school,

  Liberal gloss and leavening rule.

  How then? could other issue be

  At last but ferment and a change?

  True, none recanted or dared range:

  To Moses’ law they yet did cling,

  But some would fain have tempering—

  In the bare place a bit of green.

  And lo, an advent—the Essene,

  Gentle and holy, meek, retired,

  With virgin charity inspired:

  Precursor, nay, a pledge, agree,

  Of light to break from Galilee.

  And, ay, He comes: the lilies blow!

  In hamlet, field, and on the road,

  To every man, in every mode

  How did the crowning Teacher show