Herman Melville- Complete Poems

by Herman Melville

  With the wondrous sedate courtesy of all the grandees in these parts, the Azem with his silvery spade-beard sitting crosslegged on the green silken cushions; he, though never understanding a word of my Lord’s English, yet very gravely and attentively, as before, heard him out; him, my Lord, first, I mean, leaning over toward him, his hand to his ear, for, certes, he was somewhat deaf, being in years; leaning over towards him, I say, and thereafter relaxing and falling back somewhat on the cushions, and so giving another sort of heed to the interpreter; who having delivered his burden, the Azem did nothing but give a little clap with his hands, whereupon, as it were one of the painted manakins in the great clock at Strasbourg, a pretty little page issued from a sort of draped closet near by; to whom his master made a sign; whereat the page brought to my Lord the aforesaid amber vase, empty, and put it into his two hands; who made as if surprized; and after scrutinizing it, and turning it round and round, and discovering the imbedded relics, affected great admiration at being so promptly and in that tacit manner confuted in his misbelief; and much did he laud the beauty of the vase, as well; insomuch that the interpreter, a precise clerk in his careful vocation, verily he seemed as sore put to it to render my Lord.

  But if herein, and all along, my lord’s purpose was so to work on the Azem as that he, seeing his great pleasure in the vase, might be drawn to make a gift of it; I say, if this were my lord’s intent, it prospered not to the fulfillment, forasmuch as it was now the Azem’s turn to say how much he likewise, he himself, esteemed the vase, declaring that at such rate did he prize it, he would not barter it, no, not for a certain villa he spake of, though mightily he coveted the same. For besides the beauty of the vessel and the rare sculpture on it, and its being incomparably the biggest piece of amber known in those parts; besides all this, it was the very vase, he avouched—and with a kind of ardor strange to note in one so much upon his turbaned dignity—the very vase, in sooth, that being on a bridal festival filled with roses in the palace of the old Shar Gold-Beak at Shiraz, had tempted their great poet, one Sugar-Lips, to a closer inspection, when tenderly dividing the flowers one from another, and noting the little anatomies congealed in the amber, he was incontinently prompted to the inditing of certain verses; for which cause the vase thenceforth forever was inestimable. To which extravagance my lord listened with his wonted civility, nay, and with a special graciousness, but for all that a bit sadly too, meseemed, and would now again have swerved the discourse; but the Azem was beforehand, and bade the page bring him something from a silver-bound chest near by in an alcove. It was a vellum book, about the bigness of a prayer-book for church-going, but very rich, with jewelled clasps, and writ by some famous scribe in the fair Persian text, and illuminated withall like unto the great Popish parchment folios I have seen. And this book, surely of great cost, the Azem with his own hands right nobly did present to my lord, putting his finger on a certain page whereon were traced those verses aforesaid.

  But, shortly after, some sherbert and sweetmeats being served, and the Azem’s own mules being at the garden-gate, and, the more to honor us, with gorgeous new trappings; our train withdrew in the same state as when we entered, that is, the one great captain-soldier leading, with a mighty truncheon in his hand, and his troop making a lane through the which we proceeded to the saddles, they the while salaaming and paying extreme obeisance to my lord, which indeed was but their bounden duty, for he was an Englishman and my noble master.

  Now a Greek renegado, one long dwelling in Persia, a scholar, and at whiles employed by my lord, he being expert in divers tongues of both continents and learned in the chirography of the Persian and Arabic; this polyglot infidel—the more shame to him for turning his back on his Saviour—he being at the embassy one day, which was I know not what kind of strange holiday with these folk; my lord for his recreation and by way of challenge, being a little merry as was his wont sometimes for a brief space after dinner; he commanded the Greek to put those verses into English rhyme if he could, and on the instant, or as soon soever as might be. Upon which the Greek said, “My lord, I will try; but, I pray thee, give me wine,” glancing at the table where remained certain wicker flasks of the choice vintages both of Persia and Cyprus; “Yes, wine, my Lord,” he repeated. “Now,” demanded my master severely. “Bethink thee now, my lord,” quoth he, saluting; “this same Sugar Lips’ verses being all grapes, or veritably saturated with the ripe juice thereof, there is no properly rendering them without a cup or two of the same; and, behold, my Lord, I am sober.”

  My master after a moment seeming to debate in his mind whether this proceeded from a strange familiar impudence in the varlet, or from an honest superstition however silly, for he delivered himself very soberly and discreetly, commanded wine to be served him; when the renegado, quaffing like a good fellow his cup or two, which were indeed five for I took the tally; he, I say, quaffing at whiles, and all the time holding the vellum book in one hand,—and, sooth, but one hand he had, the other having been smitten off by a scimeter, whether in honorable fray or by the executioner, I wot not; he, ever and anon scanning the page, humming and hooing to himself and swaying his body like the dervishes hereabouts, at last after mighty ado, sang—he scarse said it—the interpreted verses; which were these:

  “Specks, tiny specks, in this translucent amber:

  Your leave, bride-roses, may one pry and see?

  How odd! a dainty little skeleton-chamber;

  And—odder yet—sealed walls but windows be!

  Death’s open secret.—Well, we are;

  And here, here comes the jolly angel with the jar!”

  Wherein, in the ultimate verse, Sugar-Lips did particularise, doubtless, one of the twain in the releivo of the little medallion on one side of the vase, of which cunning piece I have in the foregoing made account.

  “And is that all?” said my lord composedly, but scarce cheerfully, when the renegado had made an end; “And is that all? And call you that a crushing from the grape? The black grape, I wis”; there checking himself, as a wise man will do catching himself tripping in an indiscreet sincerity; which to cover, peradventure, he, suddenly rising, retired to his chamber, and though commanding his visage somewhat, yet in pace and figure, showing the spirit within sadly distraught; for, sooth, the last Michaelmas his birth-day he was three score and three years old, and in privy fear, as I knew who long was near him, of a certain sudden malady whereof his father and grandfather before him had died about that age. But for my part I always esteemed it a mighty weakness in so great a man to let the ribbald wit of a vain ballader, and he a heathen, make heavy his heart. For me who am but a small one, I was in secret pleased with the lax pleasantry of this Sugar-Lips but in such sort as one is tickled with the profane capering of a mountebank at Bartholomew’s fair by Thames. Howbeit, had I been, God knows, of equal reverend years with my master and subject by probable inheritance to the like sudden malady with him, peradventure I myself in that case might have waxed sorrowful, doubting whether the grape were not indeed the black grape, as he phrased it, wherefrom that vain balladry had been distilled.

  But now no more hereof, nor of the amber vase, which like unto some little man in great place hath been made overmuch of, as the judicious reader hereof may opine.

  Adieu

  RING down! The curtain falls, and ye

  Will go your ways. Yet think of me.

  And genial take what’s genial given

  And long be happy under heaven.

  MAPS TO CLAREL

  CHRONOLOGY

  NOTE ON THE TEXTS

  NOTES

  INDEX OF TITLES AND FIRST LINES

  Jerusalem and Environs

  Route of Clarel and the Other Pilgrims

  The pilgrims’ ten-day journey begins and ends in Jerusalem, taking them to Jericho, the Dead Sea, Mar Saba, and Bethlehem.


  Chronology

  1819

  Herman Melville born August 1 in New York City, third child of Allan Melvill (b. 1782) and Maria Gansevoort (b. 1791); older brother is Gansevoort (b. 1815) and older sister is Helen (b. 1817).

  1821

  In March Allan Melvill borrows $2,000 from his father, Thomas Melvill, Naval Officer of the Port of Boston. A sister, Augusta, born August 24.

  1822

  In Boston, Elizabeth Shaw, Melville’s future wife, born June 13 to lawyer Lemuel Shaw and Elizabeth Knapp Shaw; the mother dies in childbirth. Elizabeth will be called “Lizzie” by her family, and by Melville.

  1823

  A brother, Allan born April 7.

  1825

  A sister, Catherine, born May 21. Begins term at the New York Male High School September 12.

  1826

  Allan Melvill urgently presses his brother-in-law Peter Gansevoort for a large loan April 8. Melville sent to vacation with maternal grandmother August 10.

  1827

  A sister, Frances Priscilla (Fanny), born August 26. In Boston, Lemuel Shaw marries again, to Hope Savage, August 29.

  1828

  Is “the best Speaker in the introductory Department” at the New York High School. In February the family rents a house on Broadway.

  1829

  In Boston, on February 19, Thomas Melvill adds a clause to his will treating his loans to his son Allan as debts due to his estate. In mid-April Thomas Melvill is removed from his post as Naval Officer of the Port of Boston by President Andrew Jackson. Knowing Allan Melvill cannot repay his brother-in-law, Catherine Van Schaick Gansevoort in her will on June 8 tries to make her daughter Maria Melvill’s inheritance free from her husband’s debts and from his control. Melville is enrolled in the Grammar School of Columbia College, September 28.

  1830

  A brother, Thomas, born January 24. Catherine Gansevoort adds a codicil to her will on June 8 specifying that the more than $10,000 her son Peter has loaned to Allan Melvill will be paid to him from Maria’s portion of her legacy. Lemuel Shaw sworn in as Chief Justice of the State of Massachusetts, August 22. In October, fleeing creditors, Allan Melvill sends furniture and family up the Hudson to Albany, then follows with one child, the eleven-year-old Melville. Melville and his brother Gansevoort are registered at the Albany Academy, October 15. Maternal grandmother, Catherine Van Schaick Gansevoort, dies in Albany, December 30, aged seventy-eight.

  1831

  Begins second year at the Albany Academy. Is withdrawn from the Albany Academy in October.

  1832

  Father dies in Albany, January 28, aged forty-nine. Brother Gansevoort set up in the fur and cap business by Melville’s mother. Becomes a clerk in the New York State Bank before June. Melville is the only one of the children kept in Albany to work through a cholera epidemic. Paternal grandfather, Old Thomas Melvill, a Hero of the Tea Party, dies September 15, aged eighty-one. His Boston-area heirs protect their own fortunes by legal means, and their contact with Maria and her children all but ceases for a decade in which Maria sees only Thomas Melvill, Jr. This year, Maria and her children begin spelling their name Melville.

  1833

  Creditors pursue Maria Melville. In Boston, maternal grandmother, Priscilla Scollay Melvill, dies April 12, aged seventy-eight. Melville spends his week’s vacation in late August with his uncle Thomas Melvill, Jr., at Pittsfield.

  1834

  Leaves the bank in late April or May to work in brother Gansevoort’s fur and cap store. Takes no vacation because Gansevoort needs him at the store.

  1835

  Still at the store, Melville may have attended the Albany Classical School. Joins the Albany Young Men’s Association for Mutual Improvement, January 29.

  1836

  Remains in the Young Men’s Association. Spends week in August at Pittsfield. Is readmitted to the Albany Academy after a five-year absence, and enrolls in the Latin course. Joins the Ciceronian Debating Society, which soon disbands. Gansevoort’s business runs deeply into debt, and Maria Melville mortgages most of what remains of her inherited property.

  1837

  Is withdrawn again from the Albany Academy and becomes active in the Philo Logos Society where he and Charles Van Loon delight “in being pitted against each other in an intellectual combat.” Gansevoort’s business fails during the national financial panic. Family convenes in June and decides that Gansevoort will go to New York City to study law; Melville will go to Pittsfield to run the farm for his uncle Thomas, who is leaving for Galena, Illinois; and Allan, resentfully, will work in his uncle Peter’s law office in Albany. After harvesting the crops, Melville teaches in a backwoods school in the Berkshires.

  1838

  Returns to Albany in January and rejoins the revived Ciceronian Debating Society. Maria Melville rents a cheap house at Lansingburgh, a dozen miles north of Albany. Melville begins a course in surveying and engineering at the Lansingburgh Academy. Performs as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, in a performance at the Academy, December 12.

  1839

  Completes course in surveying and engineering but fails to gain a job on the Erie Canal. In May, first known fiction, “Fragments from a Writing Desk,” appears in two installments in a Lansingburgh newspaper. Signs on a merchant ship sailing from Manhattan for Liverpool on June 4 and returning on October 1. Then teaches at Greenbush, across the Hudson from Albany.

  1840

  The school cannot pay Melville all it owes him. Teaches at Brunswick, New York, near southwestern Vermont. In March in Galena, Illinois, Melville’s uncle Thomas is caught stealing from his employer and fired—a secret kept from the Lansingburgh family. In June Melville visits his uncle Thomas, traveling by way of the Erie Canal and the Great Lakes; he hopes to succeed in the West with the help of his uncle, for if his uncle is prosperous and influential enough he may never have to go to sea again. Returns east in summer, perhaps by way of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. Teaches briefly, then (accompanied by Gansevoort) signs on a whaling ship, the Acushnet, at Fairhaven, Massachusetts, December 31.

  1841

  In early January Gansevoort goes on to Boston to make contact with the Melvill aunts and more importantly Judge Shaw. In September Gansevoort (with Helen) waylays Shaw as he holds court in Lenox. At the Little Red Inn (later the Curtis Hotel) in Lenox, Shaw’s wife and daughter, charmed with Helen, insist on her making a long winter visit with them. From this time on, Helen and Lizzie write each other and exchange visits, so that Lizzie knows any news the family has about Melville.

  1842

  At Nukuheva, in the Marquesas Islands, on July 9, the Acushnet is welcomed by naked female swimmers. Deserts with a companion, Richard Tobias Greene, and flees inland. Greene leaves but Melville stays on with the Typee tribe. Reaches the coast and signs on the Lucy Ann, an Australian whaler, August 9. Some on the ship refuse duty in Tahiti, and, joined by Melville, are laxly imprisoned by the British Consul on September 24. In mid-October Melville and an English member of the crew go to the neighboring island, Eimeo. In Eimeo, signs “for the cruise” on a Nantucket whaler, the Charles and Henry, November 3; the other sailors appreciate Melville’s tales of the sexual ways of the Marquesans.

  1843

  Discharged at Lahaina, in the Hawaiian Islands, April 27. At Honolulu works as a pin-setter in a bowling alley and afterward as a store clerk. Signs on the U.S. Navy frigate United States as an ordinary seaman August 18.

  1844

  The United States arrives October 3 at the Navy Yard at Boston, where Melville, not yet discharged, learns that Gansevoort has orated at a mass meeting for James K. Polk in Nashville and is drawing great crowds on his return through Ohio and western New York. Discharged in Boston October 14, and sees Melvill aunts, one of whom has recently visited his mother. Learns that Lizzie Shaw has also visited his mother in Lansingb
urgh and corresponds with sisters Helen and Augusta. At the Shaw house on Mt. Vernon Street, on Beacon Hill, Lemuel Shaw welcomes him; Melville and Lizzie are drawn to each other as she tells him intimate stories of his family during his almost four-year absence and he tells her of his adventures. Enjoining silence to his mother, Melville goes to Manhattan, where Allan is running the law office in Gansevoort’s absence. Surprises mother, four sisters, and Thomas in Lansingburgh, October 22, but just misses Gansevoort there. Back in Manhattan in late October, watches brothers Gansevoort and Allan in a mammoth torchlight procession, then attends Gansevoort’s last great oration, on November 2, in Newark, which includes a thrilling account of his stay as a guest of Andrew Jackson in the Hermitage. Urged by sister Augusta, begins to write out his adventures with the Typees, in Manhattan.

  1845

  In early spring Harper & Brothers in New York refuse Typee as a hoax. Melville leaves the manuscript in his brothers’ law office and returns to Lansingburgh. Sees Lizzie again in late May when she visits his mother with Judge Shaw on their way to Chicago. On July 31 Gansevoort goes to London as Secretary of the American Legation in London, taking the rejected manuscript. In fall Gansevoort offers the manuscript to John Murray, who is skeptical that a mere sailor could have written it. In December, having been reassured of the manuscript’s authenticity, Murray agrees to publish Typee, with omissions, but also with additions Melville has sent over.

  1846

  When Washington Irving calls at the Legation, Gansevoort reads to him from the proofs of Typee. Irving persuades his American publisher, G. P. Putnam, to accept it for Wiley & Putnam. Typee published by John Murray in London, February 21. It is rushed into print a month later in the United States in the Library of American Books, edited by Evert Duyckinck. Typee is a sensation in both countries because of the freshness of its descriptions of Polynesian life but doubts about its authenticity are common. The Presbyterian American publisher John Wiley, realizing that he has printed erotic descriptions and criticisms of missionaries, now requires that Melville expurgate the book. The London edition, intact and later augmented with news about Melville’s shipmate Greene, circulates through the British Empire during Melville’s lifetime. Melville becomes and long remains the first American literary sex symbol. Sees his brother Tom off on a whaler from Westport, Massachusetts, in early May. Gansevoort dies in London, May 12, aged thirty. A Buffalo newspaper publishes an interview with Melville’s companion Greene, July 1; the resultant controversy provides new publicity for the book. Travels to Rochester to meet his old shipmate. Wiley & Putnam issues the “Revised” edition—heavily expurgated, but containing the new “The Story of Toby,” August 6. In Lansingburgh, Lizzie arrives August 31 for a long visit, and (on this day, according to Maria Melville’s dating) she and Melville become engaged. In December Melville sells new manuscript to Murray and to the Harpers—Omoo, which continues his adventures from the time he leaves the Typee Valley until he boards a whaler in Eimeo.