Herman Melville- Complete Poems
Page 67
The Laced Caps I see between forward guns:
Away from the powder-room they puff the cigar:
“Three days more, hey, the donnas and the dons!”—
“Your Xeres widow, will you hunt her up, Starr?”
The Laced Caps laugh, and the bright waves too;
Very jolly, very wicked both sea and crew.
Nor heaven looks sour on either, I guess,
Nor Pecksniff he bosses the gods’ high mess.
Wistful ye peer, wife, concerned for my head,
And how best to get me betimes to my bed.
But, king o’ the club, the gayest golden spark,
Sailor o’ sailors, what sailor do I mark?
Tom Tight, Tom Tight, no fine fellow finer,
A cutwater-nose, ay, a spirited soul;
But, bowsing away at the well-brewed bowl,
He never bowled back from that last voyage to China.
Tom was lieutenant in the brig-o’-war famed
When an officer was hung for an arch mutineer,
But a mystery cleaved, and the captain was blamed,
And a rumpus, too, raised, though his honor it was clear.
And Tom he would say, when the mousers would try him
And with cup after cup o’ Burgundy ply him—
“Gentlemen, in vain with your wassail you beset,
For the more I tipple, the tighter do I get.”
No blabber, no, not even with the can—
True to himself and loyal to his clan.
Tom blessed us starboard and d——d us larboard,
Right down from rail to the streak o’ the garboard.
Nor less, wife, we liked him.—Tom was a man
In contrast queer with Chaplain Le Fan,
Who blessed us at morn, and at night yet again,
D—ning us only in decorous strain;
Preaching ’tween the guns—each cutlass in its place—
From text that averred Old Adam, a hard case.
I see him—Tom—on horse-block standing,
Trumpet at mouth, thrown up all amain,
An elephant’s bugle, vociferous demanding
Of topmen aloft in the hurricane of rain,
“Letting that sail there your faces flog?
Manhandle it, men, and you’ll get the good grog!”
O Tom but he knew a blue-jacket’s ways,
And how a lieutenant may genially haze:
Only a sailor sailors heartily praise.
Wife, where be all these chaps, I wonder?
Trumpets in the tempest, terrors in the fray,
Boomed their commands along the deck like thunder;
But silent is the sod, and thunder dies away.
But Captain Turret, “Old Hemlock” tall
(A leaning tower when his tank brimmed all)
Manœuvre out alive from the War did he?
Or, too old for that, drift under the lee?
Kentuckian colossal, who touching at Madeira
The huge puncheon shipped o’ prime Santa Clara;
Then rocked along the deck so solemnly!
No whit the less though judicious was enough
In dealing with the Finn who made the great huff:—
Our three-decker’s giant; a grand boatswain’s mate,
Manliest of men in his own natural senses;
But, driven stark mad by the Devil’s drugged stuff,
Storming all aboard from his run-ashore late,
Challenging to battle, vouchsafing no pretences.
A reeling King Og, delirious in power,
The quarter-deck carronades he seemed to make cower.
“Put him in brig there,” said Lieutenant Marrot.
“Put him in brig!” back he mocked like a parrot;
“Try it then!” swaying a fist like Thor’s sledge
And making the pigmy constables hedge—
Ship’s-corporals and the Master-at-Arms.
“In brig there, I say!”—They dally no more.
Like hounds let slip on a desperate boar
Together they pounce on the formidable Finn,
Pinion and cripple and hustle him in.
Anon, under sentry, between twin guns,
He slides off in drowse, and the long night runs.
Morning brings a summons. Whistling it calls,
Shrilled through the pipes of the Boatswain’s four aids—
Thrilled down the hatchways along the dusk halls:
Muster to the Scourge!—Dawn of doom, and its blast!
As from cemeteries raised, sailors swarm before the mast,
Tumbling up the ladders from the ship’s nether shades.
Keeping in the background and taking small part,
Lounging at their ease, indifferent in face,
Behold the trim marines, uncompromised in heart.
Their Major, buttoned up, near the staff finds room—
The staff o’ Lieutenants standing grouped in their place.
All the Laced Caps o’ the ward-room come,
The Chaplain among them, disciplined and dumb.
The blue-nosed Boatswain, complexioned like slag,
Like a Blue Monday lours—his implements in bag.
Executioners, his aids, a couple by him stand,
At a nod there the thongs to receive from his hand.
Never venturing a caveat whatever may betide,
Though functionally here on humanity’s side,
The grave Surgeon shows like the formal physician
Attending the rack o’ the Spanish Inquisition.
The Angel o’ the “brig” brings his prisoner up.
Then, steadied by his old Santa Clara, a sup,
Heading, all erect, the ranged assizes there,
Lo, Captain Turret, and under starred bunting
(A florid full face and fine silvered hair)
Gigantic the yet greater giant confronting.
Now the culprit he liked, as a tall Captain can
A Titan subordinate and true sailor-man;
And frequent he’d shown it: no worded advance,
But flattering the Finn with a well-timed glance.
But what of that now? In the martinet-mien
Read the Articles of War, heed the naval routine;
While, cut to the heart a dishonor there to win,
Restored to his senses, stood the Anak Finn;
In racked self-control the squeezed tears peeping
Scalding the eye with repressed inkeeping.
Discipline must be; the scourge is deemed due.
But, ah for the sickening and strange heart-benumbing,
Compassionate abasement in shipmates that view:
Such a grand champion shamed there succumbing!
“Brown, tie him up.”—The cord he brooked:
How else?—his arms spread apart—never threaping;
No, never he flinched, never sideways he looked,
Peeled to the waistband, the marble flesh creeping,
Lashed by the sleet the officious winds urge.
In function his fellows their fellowship merge—
The twain standing nigh—the two boatswain’s-mates,
Sailors of his grade, ay, and brothers of his mess.
With sharp thongs adroop, the junior one awaits
The word to uplift.
“Untie him:—so!
Submission is enough.—Man, you may go.”
Then, promenading aft, brushing fat Purser Smart,
“Flog? never meant it—had’nt any heart.
Degrade that tall fellow?”—Such, wife, was he,
Old Captain Turret who the brave wine could stow.
Magnanimous, you think?—But what does Dick see?
Apron to your eye! Why, never fell a blow:
Cheer up, old wifie, ’twas a long time ago.
But where’s that sore one, crabbed and severe,
Lieutenant Don Lumbago, an arch scrutineer?
Call the roll to-day, would he answer—Here!
When the Blixum’s fellows to quarters mustered
How he’d lurch along the lane of gun-crews clustered,
Testy as touchwood, to pry and to peer.
Jerking his sword underneath larboard arm
He ground his worn grinders to keep himself calm.
Composed in his nerves, from the fidgets set free,
Tell, Sweet Wrinkles, alive now is he
In Paradise a parlor where the even tempers be?
Where’s Commander All-a-Tanto?
Where’s Orlop Bob singing up from below?
Where’s Rhyming Ned? has he spun his last canto?
Where’s Jewsharp Jim? Where’s Rigadoon Joe?
Ah, for the music over and done,
The band all dismissed save the droned trombone!
Where’s Glen o’ the gun-room who loved Hot-Scotch—
Glen, prompt and cool in a perilous watch?
Where’s flaxen-haired Phil?—a gray lieutenant?
Or, rubicund, flying a dignified pennant?
But where sleeps his brother?—The cruise it was o’er,
But ah for Death’s grip that welcomed him ashore!
Where’s Sid the cadet so frank in his brag,
Whose toast was audacious—“Here’s Sid, and Sid’s flag!”
Like holiday-craft that have sunk unknown,
May a lark of a lad go lonely down?
Who takes the census under the sea?
Can others like old ensigns be,
Bunting I hoisted to flutter at the gaff—
Rags in end that once were flags
Gallant streaming from the staff?
Such scurvy doom could the chances deal
To Top-Gallant Harry and Jack Genteel?
Lo, Genteel Jack in hurricane weather
Shagged like a bear, like a red lion roaring;
But, O, so fine in his chapeau and feather,
In port to the ladies never once jawing.
All bland politesse, how urbane was he:—
“Oui, Mademoiselle”—“Ma chere amie!”
’Twas Jack got up the ball at Naples,
Gay in the old Ohio glorious;
His hair was curled by the berth-deck barber,
Never you’d deemed him a cub of rude Boreas;
In tight little pumps, with the grand dames in rout,
A’flinging his shapely foot all about;
His watch-chain with love’s jewelled tokens abounding,
Curls ambrosial shaking out odors,
Waltzing along the batteries, astounding
The Gunner glum and the grim-visaged loaders.
Wife, where be all these blades, I wonder,
Pennoned fine fellows so strong, so gay?
Never their colors with a dip dived under:
Have they hauled them down in a lack-lustre day,
Or beached their boats in the Far Far Away?
Hither and thither, blown wide asunder,
Where’s this fleet, I wonder and wonder.
Slipt their cables, rattled their adieu
(Whereaway pointing? to what rendezvous?)
Out of sight, out of mind, like the crack Constitution,
And many a keel Time never shall renew—
Bon Homme Dick o’ the buff Revolution,
The Black Cockade and the staunch True-Blue.
Doff hats to Decatur! But where is his blazon?
Must merited fame endure time’s wrong—
Glory’s ripe grape wizen up to a raisin?
Yes! for Nature teems, and the years are strong,
And who can keep the tally o’ the names that fleet along!
But his frigate, wife, his bride? Would blacksmiths brown
Into smithereens smite the solid old renown?
Rivetting the bolts in the iron-clad’s shell,
Hark to the hammers with a rat-tat-tat:
“Handier a derby than a laced cocked hat!
The Monitor was ugly, but she served us right well,
Better than the Cumberland, a beauty and the belle.”
Better than the Cumberland!—Heart alive in me!
That battlemented hull, Tantallon o’ the sea,
Kicked in, as at Boston the taxed chests o’ tea!
Ay, spurned by the ram, once a tall shapely craft
But lopped by the Rebs to an iron-beaked raft—
A blacksmith’s unicorn in armor cap-a-pie.
Under the water-line a ram’s blow is dealt:
And foul fall the knuckles that strike below the belt.
Nor brave the inventions that serve to replace
The openness of valor while dismantling the grace.
Aloof from all this, and the never-ending game,
Tantamount to teetering, plot and counterplot:
Impenetrable armor—all-perforating shot;
Aloof, bless God, ride the war-ships of old,
A grand fleet moored in the roadstead of fame;
Not submarine sneaks with them are enrolled;
Their long shadows dwarf us, their flags are as flame.
Do’nt fidget so, wife; an old man’s passion
Amounts to no more than this smoke that I puff;
There, there now, buss me in good old fashion;
A died-down candle will flicker in the snuff.
But one last thing let your old babbler say,
What Decatur’s coxswain said who was long ago hearsed,
“Take in your flying-kites, for there comes a lubber’s day
When gallant things will go, and the three-deckers first.”
My pipe is smoked out, and the grog runs slack;
But bowse away, wife, at your blessed Bohea:
This empty can here must needs solace me.
Nay, Sweetheart, nay; I take that back:
Dick drinks from your eyes and he finds no lack!
* Note. Historic.
Tom Deadlight
(1810)
DURING a tempest encountered homeward-bound from the Mediterranean, a grizzled petty-officer, one of the two captains of the forecastle, dying at night in his hammock, swung in the sick-bay under the tiered gun-decks of the British Dreadnaught, 98, wandering in his mind, though with glimpses of sanity, and starting up at whiles, sings by snatches his good-bye and last injunctions to two messmates his watchers, one of whom fans the fevered tar with the flap of his old sou’-wester.
Some names and phrases, with here and there a line, or part of one; these, in his aberration wrested into incoherency from their original connection and import, he involuntarily derives, as he does the measure, from a famous old sea-ditty, whose cadences, long rife, and now humming in the collapsing brain, attune the last flutterings of distempered thought:—
Farewell and adieu to you noble hearties,—
Farewell and adieu to you ladies of Spain,
For I’ve received orders for to sail for the Deadman,
But hope with the grand fleet to see you again.
I have hove my ship to, with main-top-sail aback, boys;
I have hove my ship to, for to strike soundings clear—
The black scud a’flying; but by God’s blessing, dam’me,
Right up the
Channel for the Deadman I’ll steer.
I have worried through the waters that are callèd the Doldrums,
And growled at Sargasso that clogs while ye grope—
Blast my eyes, but the light-ship is hid by the mist, lads:—
Flying-Dutchman—oddsbobbs—off the Cape of Good Hope!
But what’s this I feel that is fanning my cheek, Matt?
The white goney’s wing?—how she rolls!—’tis the Cape!—
Give my kit to the mess, Jock, for kin none is mine, none;
And tell Holy Joe to avast with the crape.
Dead-reckoning, says Joe, it w’ont do to go by;
But they doused all the glims, Matt, in sky t’other night.
Dead-reckoning is good for to sail for the Deadman;
And Tom Deadlight he thinks it may reckon near right.
The signal!—it streams for the grand fleet to anchor.
The Captains—the trumpets—the hullabaloo!
Stand by for blue-blazes, and mind your shank-painters,
For the Lord High Admiral he’s squinting at you!
But give me my tot, Matt, before I roll over;
Jock, let’s have your flipper, it’s good for to feel;
And do’nt sew me up without baccy in mouth, boys,
And do’nt blubber like lubbers when I turn up my keel.
Jack Roy
KEPT up by relays of generations young
Never dies at halyards the blithe chorus sung;
While in sands, sounds, and seas where the storm-petrels cry,
Dropped mute around the globe, these halyard-singers lie.
Short-lived the clippers for racing-cups that run,
And speeds in life’s career many a lavish mother’s-son.
But thou, manly king o’ the old Splendid’s crew,
The ribbons o’ thy hat still a’fluttering should fly—
A challenge, and forever, nor the bravery should rue.
Only in a tussle for the Starry Flag high
When ’tis piety to do, and privilege to die,