Herman Melville- Complete Poems

by Herman Melville

  Followed by the Asters

  Toward the sepulchre of snows,

  Then, solaced by the Vial,

  Less grieve I for the Tomb,

  Not widowed of the fragrance

  If parted from the bloom—

  Parted from the bloom

  That was but for a day;

  Rose! I dally with thy doom:

  The solace will not stay!

  There is nothing like the bloom;

  And the Attar poignant minds me

  Of the bloom that’s passed away.

  Hearth-Roses

  THE Sugar-Maple embers in bed

  Here fended in Garden of Fire,

  Like the Roses yield musk,

  Like the Roses are red,

  Like the Roses expire

  Lamented when low;

  But, excelling the flower,

  Are odorous in ashes

  As e’en in their glow.

  Ah, Love, when life closes,

  Dying the death of the just,

  May we vie with Hearth-Roses,

  Smelling sweet in our dust.

  Rose Window

  THE preacher took from Solomon’s Song

  Four words for text with mystery rife—

  The Rose of Sharon,—figuring Him

  The Resurrection and the Life;

  And, pointing many an urn in view,

  How honied a homily he drew.

  There, in the slumberous afternoon,

  Through minster gray, in lullaby rolled

  The hummed metheglin charged with swoon.

  Drowsy, my decorous hands I fold

  Till sleep overtakes with dream for boon.

  I saw an Angel with a Rose

  Come out of Morning’s garden-gate,

  And, lamp-like hold the Rose aloft.

  He entered a sepulchral Strait.

  I followed. And I saw the Rose

  Shed dappled dawn upon the dead;

  The shrouds and mort-cloths all were lit

  To plaids and checquered tartans red.

  I woke. The great Rose-Window high,

  A mullioned wheel in gable set,

  Suffused with rich and soft in dye

  Where Iris and Aurora met;

  Aslant in sheaf of rays it threw

  From all its foliate round of panes

  Transfiguring light on dingy stains,

  While danced the motes in dusty pew.

  Rosary Beads

  I

  The Accepted Time

  ADORE the Roses; nor delay

  Until the rose-fane fall,

  Or ever their censers cease to sway:

  “To-day!” the rose-priests call.

  II

  Without Price

  Have the Roses. Needs no pelf

  The blooms to buy,

  Nor any rose-bed to thyself

  Thy skill to try:

  But live up to the Rose’s light,

  Thy meat shall turn to roses red,

  Thy bread to roses white.

  III

  Grain by grain

  Grain by grain the Desert drifts

  Against the Garden-Land:

  Hedge well thy Roses, heed the stealth

  Of ever-creeping Sand.

  The Devotion of the Flowers to their Lady

  ATTRIBUTED to Clement Drouon, monk, a Provençal of noble birth in the 11th century. In earlier life a troubadour, a devotee of Love and the Rose, but eventually, like some others of his stamp in that age, for an unrevealed cause retiring from the gay circles where he had long been a caressed favorite and ultimately disappearing from the world in a monastery.

  O Queen, we are loyal: shall sad ones forget?

  We are natives of Eden—

  Sharing its memory with you,

  and your handmaidens yet.

  You bravely dissemble with looks that beguile

  Musing mortals to murmur

  Reproachful “So festal, O Flower,

  we but weary the while?

  “What, nothing has happened? no event to make wan?

  Begetting things hateful—

  Old age, decay, and the sorrows,

  devourers of man?”

  They marvel and marvel how came you so bright,

  Whence the splendor, the joyance—

  Florid revel of joyance,

  the Cypress in sight!

  Scarce you would poor Adam upbraid that his fall

  Like a land-slide by waters

  Rolled an out-spreading impulse

  disordering all;

  That the Angel indignant, with eyes that foreran

  The betrayed generations,

  Cast out the flowers wherewith Eve

  decked her nuptials with man.

  Ah, exile is exile though spiced be the sod,

  In Shushan we languish—

  Languish with secret desire

  for the garden of God.

  But all of us yet—

  We the Lilies whose pallor is passion,

  We the Pansies that muse nor forget—

  In harbinger airs how we freshen,

  When, clad in the amice of gray silver-hemmed,

  Meek coming in twilight and dew,

  The Day-Spring, with pale priestly hand and begemmed,

  Touches, and coronates you:—

  Breathing, O daughter of far descent,

  Banished, yet blessed in banishment,

  Whereto is appointed a term;

  Flower, voucher of Paradise, visible pledge,

  Rose, attesting it spite of the Worm.

  PART II: THE ROSE FARMER

  The Rose Farmer

  COMING through the rye:

  Hereof the rural poet whistles;

  But who the flute will try

  At Scrambling through the thistles!

  Nor less upon some roseate way

  Emerge the prickly passage may.

  But we who after ragged scrambles

  Through fate’s blessed thorns and brambles

  Come unto our roses late—

  Aright to manage the estate,

  This indeed it well may task us

  Quite inexperienced as we be

  In aught but thickets that unmasque us

  Of man’s ennobling drapery.

  Indigence is a plain estate:

  Riches imply the complicate.

  What peevish pestering wants surprise,

  What bothering ambitions rise!

  Then, too, Fate loans a lot luxurious

  At such hard cent-per-cent usurious!

  Mammon, never meek as Moses,

  Gouty, mattressed on moss-roses,

  A crumpled rose-leaf makes him furious.

  Allow, as one’s purveyor here

  Of sweet content of Christian cheer,

  “Vile Pelf” we overestimate.

  Howbeit, a rose-farm nigh Damascus

  Would Dives change at even rate

  For Lazarus’ snow-farm in Alaskus?

  But that recalls me: I return.—

  A friend, whose shadow has decreased,

  For whom they reared a turbaned urn,

  A corpulent grandee of the East,

  Whose kind good will to me began

  When I against his Rhamadan

  Prepared a chowder for his feast,

  Well, dying, he remembered me:

  A brave bequest, a farm in fee

 
Forever consecrate to roses,

  And laved by streams that sacred are,

  Pharpar and twin-born Abana,

  Which last the pleasure-ground incloses,

  At least winds half-way roundabout—

  That garden to caress, no doubt.

  But, ah, the stewardship it poses!

  Every hour the bloom, the bliss

  Upbraid me that I am remiss.

  For still I dally,—I delay,—

  Long do hesitate, and say,

  “Of fifty thousand Damask Roses,—

  (For my rose-farm no great matter),—

  Shall I make me heaps of posies,

  Or some chrystal drops of Attar?

  To smell or sell or for a boon,

  Quick you cull a rose and easy;

  But Attar is not got so soon,

  Demanding more than gesture breezy.

  Yet this same Attar, I suppose,

  Long time will last, outlive indeed

  The rightful sceptre of the rose

  And coronations of the weed.”

  Sauntering, plunged in this debate,

  And somewhat leaning to elect

  The thing most easy to effect,

  I chanced upon a Persian late,

  A sort of gentleman-rose-farmer

  On knees beside his garden-gate

  Telling his beads, just like a palmer.

  Beads? coins, I meant. Each golden one

  Upon a wire of silver run;

  And every time a coin he told

  His brow he raised and eyes he rolled

  Devout in grateful orison.

  Surely, methought, this pious man,

  A florist too, will solve my doubt.

  Saluting him, I straight began:

  “Decide, I pray, a dubious matter,—”

  And put the Roses and the Attar.

  Whereat the roses near and far—

  For all his garden was a lawn

  Of roses thick as daisies are

  In meads from smoky towns withdrawn—

  They turned their heads like ladies, when

  They hear themselves discussed by men.

  But he, he swerved a wrinkled face,

  Elderly, yet with ruddy trace—

  Tinged doubly by warm flushings thrown

  From sunset’s roses and his own;

  And, after scanning me and sounding,

  “And you? an older man than I?

  Late come you with your sage propounding:

  Allah! your time has long gone by.”—

  “Indeed, Sir, but so ruled the fate

  I came unto my roses late.

  What then? these gray hairs but disguise,

  Since down in heart youth never dies—

  O, sharpened by the long delay,

  I’m eager for my roses quite;

  But first would settle this prime matter—

  Touching the Roses and the Attar:

  I fear to err there; set me right.”

  Meseemed his purs’d eyes grateful twinkled

  Hearing of veteran youth unwrinkled,

  Himself being old. But now the answer

  Direct came, like a charging lancer:

  “Attar? go ask the Parsee yonder.

  Lean as a rake with his distilling,

  Cancel his debts, scarce worth a shilling!

  How he exists I frequent wonder.

  No neighbor loves him: sweet endeavor

  Will get a nosegay from him never;

  No, nor even your ducats will;

  A very save-all for his still!

  Of me, however, all speak well:

  You see, my little coins I tell;

  I give away, but more I sell.

  In mossy pots, or bound in posies,

  Always a market for my roses.

  But attar, why, it comes so dear

  Tis far from popular, that’s clear.

  I flourish, I; yon heavens they bless me,

  My darlings cluster to caress me.”

  At that fond sentence overheard,

  Methought his rose-seraglio stirred.

  But further he: “Yon Parsee lours,

  Headsman and Blue Beard of the flowers.

  In virgin flush of efflorescence

  When buds their bosoms just disclose,

  To get a mummified quintessence

  He scimeters the living rose!

  I grant, against my different way,

  Something, and specious, one might say.

  Ay, pluck a rose in dew Auroral,

  For buttonette to please the sight,—

  The dawn’s bloom and the bloom but floral,

  Why, what a race with them in flight!

  Quick, too, the redolence it stales.

  And yet you have the brief delight,

  And yet the next morn’s bud avails;

  And on in sequence.”

  Came that close,

  And, lo, in each flushed garden-bed,

  What agitation! every rose

  Bridling aloft the passionate head!

  But what it was that angered here,—

  Just why the high resentment shown,

  Pray, ask of her who’ll hint it clear—

  A Mormon’s first-wife making moan.

  But he, rose-farmer, long time versed

  In roses husbanded by him,

  Letting a glance upon them skim,

  Followed his thread and more rehearsed.

  And, waxing now a trifle warm:

  “This evanescence is the charm!

  And most it wins the spirits that be

  Celestial, Sir. It comes to me

  It was this fleeting charm in show

  That lured the sons of God below,

  Tired out with perpetuity

  Of heaven’s own seventh heaven aglow;

  Not Eve’s fair daughters, Sir; nay, nay,

  Less fugitive in charm are they:

  It was the rose.” As this he said

  So flattering in imputation,—

  Angelic sweethearts overhead,

  Even seraphs paying them adoration,—

  Each rose, as favoring the whim

  Grave nodded,—as attesting him.

  “But now, Sir, for your urgent matter.

  Every way—for wise employment,

  Repute and profit, health, enjoyment,

  I am for roses—sink the Attar!”

  And hereupon the downright man

  To tell his rosary re-began.

  And never a rose in all the garden

  Blushed deeper there to hear their warden

  So forcefully express his mind.

  Methought they even seemed to laugh—

  True ladies, who, in temper kind,

  Will pardon aught, though unrefined,

  Sincerely vouched in their behalf.

  Discreet, in second thought’s immersion

  I wended from this prosperous Persian

  Who, verily, seemed in life rewarded

  For sapient prudence not amiss,

  Nor transcendental essence hoarded

  In hope of quintessential bliss:

  No, never with painstaking throes

  Essays to chrystallize the rose.

  But here arrest the loom—the line.

  Though damask be your precious stuff,

  Spin it not out too superfine:

  The flower of a subject is enough.

  L’envoi

  ROSY dawns the morning Syrian,

  Youthful as in years of Noah:

 
Why then aging at three-score?

  Do moths infest your mantle Tyrian?

  Shake it out where the sun-beams pour!

  Time, Amigo, does but masque us—

  Boys in gray wigs, young at core.

  Look, what damsels of Damascus,

  Roses, lure to Pharpar’s shore!

  Sigh not—Age, dull tranquilizer,

  And arid years that filed before,

  For flowers unfit us. Nay, be wiser:

  Wiser in relish, if sedate

  Come gray-beards to their roses late.

  APPENDIX OF DELETED POEMS

  The Old Shipmaster and his crazy Barn

  BEWRINKLED in shingle and lichened in board,

  With sills settling down to the sward,

  My old barn it leaneth awry;

  It sags, and the wags wag their heads going by.

  In March winds it creaks,

  Each gaunt timber shrieks

  Like ribs of a craft off Cape Horn;

  And in midst of the din

  The foul weather beats in;

  And the grain-chest—’twould mould any corn!

  Pull it down, says a neighbor.

  Never mine be that labor!

  For a Spirit inhabits, a fellowly one,

  The like of which never responded to me

  From the long hills and hollows that make up the sea,

  Hills and hollows where Echo is none.

  The site should I clear, and rebuild,

  Would that Voice reinhabit?—Self-willed,

  Says each pleasing thing

  Never Dives can buy,

  Let me keep where I cling!

  I am touchy as tinder,

  Yea, quick to take wing,

  Nor return if I fly.

  Shadow at the Feast

  Mrs. B. 1847

  NOW churches are leafy,

  Now evergreens reign;

  ’Tis green Birnam wood

  Come to gray Dunsinane!