Herman Melville- Complete Poems

by Herman Melville

  458.15 “Since you entreat of me] What follows, The Timoneer’s Story, is also the subject of Melville’s “The Admiral of the White” (pp. 865–66).

  462.30 sail latteen] A fore-and-aft triangular sail dating back to Roman times.

  463.4 Chang and Eng] Chang and Eng Bunker (1811–1874), Chinese-American conjoined twins born in Siam and exhibited by P. T. Barnum, who later settled in Traphill, North Carolina, married to sisters.

  463.21 Hafiz] Fourteenth-century Persian poet appreciated by Melville.

  463.22 Didymus] Another name for the Apostle “Doubting” Thomas.

  464.16 Methodius] The Apostles’ chaplain is named after Methodius of Olympus (died 311 C.E.), who rejected a sexual meaning of Song of Solomon, as Bernard did (see note 620.33–36).

  465.12 Euroclydon] Tempestuous northeast wind, here the “sea-appareled Greek” (463.32).

  465.21–24 Dilston Hall . . . take his name.] James Radcliffe (1689–1716), the 3rd Earl of Derwentwater, was beheaded by George I as a Jacobite rebel, the execution coinciding with especially brilliant Northern Lights at his Dilston Hall, in Northumberland.

  466.8 amaranths] The amaranth plant is defined in Pierre as “immortal” and as “the ever-encroaching appetite for God.”

  466.37 The Anak . . . Mahone] The Arnaut, a giant of a man, like Anak, whose sons make other men appear “as grasshoppers” (Numbers 13:33); Mahone, an archaism for Mohammed.

  469.20 Mumbling] Gnawing.

  469.25 Brinvilliers’ hand] From the Marquise de Brinvilliers (1630–1676), beheaded and burned as a serial poisoner.

  471.5–14 Lady Esther . . . came not.] Hester Stanhope (1776–1839), niece of William Pitt the Younger, set herself up in an abandoned monastery near Sidon, where she sheltered many Druze and became increasingly fanatical, “the crazy Queen of Lebanon,” as Whittier called her in “Snow-Bound” (1866).

  472.9 THE EASTER FIRE] Melville never saw the celebration of Greek Easter at Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulcher; the depictions that follow draw from John Lloyd Stephens’s Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petræa, and the Holy Land (1837) and Robert Curzon’s A Visit to Monasteries in the Levant (1849).

  473.2 El Cods] “The Holy,” which some Muslims applied to Jerusalem.

  473.39 Atys’ scath] Scathe, harm. Atys or Attis was the consort of the goddess Cybele, who drove him into a frenzy in which he castrated himself; followers in his cult also were castrated.

  474.4 No: Dindymus’ nor Brahma’s crew] “No” because what happens at Easter in Jerusalem is worse than the stories of Atys. Neither Greek self-castrators at Mount Dindymus nor Indian religious fanatics had been wrought to such murderous and suicidal extreme as the Christian worshippers just described.

  477.16 Moses and Comte, Renan and Paul] Two pairs of opposites. Moses talked directly to God, and Auguste Comte (1798–1857) rejected the supernatural; Ernest Renan (1823–1892) in his Saint Paul (1869) wrote as a historical scholar who surmised that the Christ who Paul thought gave him personal revelations was his own phantom.

  478.5 slain Patroclus.] The seventh book of the Iliad describes Achilles’s supervising the temporary funeral mound of Patroclus amid intense sporting events, including great chariot races.

  478.14–18 Ibrahim the conqueror . . . heaven’s light.] Ibrahim Pasha (1789–1848), Egyptian general who in 1833 gained Syria for Egypt. In attempting to escape the frenzy at an Easter Fire, Ibrahim fainted, while many worshippers were suffocated or crushed to death.

  478.20–23 would but sustain . . . Let it stand.’] Ibrahim told Robert Curzon that the “interference of a Mahometan” in the bloody sham of the Holy Fire “would only have been held as another persecution of the Christians,” so he would not forbid it.

  479.32 Jeremiah’s in dungeon cast] Jeremiah 38 describes the imprisonment of the prophet.

  480.7 Taken and blinded] The king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, blinded King Zedekiah (Jeremiah 39:7).

  482.21 Urim and Thummim] Parts of Aaron’s breastplate as high priest, fitting over the heart (Exodus 28:30).

  482.27 Septuagint] Earliest Greek translation from the Hebrew of Old Testament books, some now classed in the Apocrypha.

  483.28 Cartaphilus] Name given to the Wandering Jew of medieval legend who mocked Jesus on his way to the cross and was condemned to roam the earth until His return.

  487.16 “Absalom’s Pillar!] So named by Absalom because he had no son to keep his name in remembrance (2 Samuel 18:18).

  488.1 “Bismillah!”] “In the name of God,” the opening of the Quran.

  488.3 “Dies iræ, dies illa!”] Day of wrath, day of doom.

  489.9 Islesman] The man from Lesbos.

  491.33 Duns Scotus] Venerated medieval Scottish theologian John Duns (1266–1308).

  493.23 “Pilots retained?] That is, ministers acting as retained attorneys for sects, as in Emerson’s “Self-Reliance.”

  500.16 Lazarus] Raised by Jesus after being dead four days, Lazarus comes forth from the tomb “bound hand and foot with grave-clothes, and his face was bound about with a napkin” (John 11:44).

  508.30 dibble] A tool for poking in the ground when planting.

  509.26 Lachryma Christi] Wine from near the bay of Naples, but also “Christ’s tears.”

  511.20 Achmed] Melville may have meant not Achmed but Ahmed (1590–1617), whose father had executed nineteen of his own brothers and half brothers.

  512.31 Plumb down from horror’s battlement] Poesque line.

  514.30 Sabaïtes’ bones] Skulls of those in Mar Saba killed by Persian invaders in 615 C.E.

  520.29 thou Paraclete] The Holy Spirit.

  522.2 Bandusia fount] Stream of crystal water celebrated by Horace, in the news because of Lord Lytton’s 1869 translation.

  522.11 Mendanna’s sea] The Spanish navigator Alvaro Mendaña de Neira (1542–1595) discovered the Solomon Islands and, more important for Melville, the Marquesas.

  524.40 colonades where Enoch roves] “Enoch walked with God” (Genesis 5:22); since “God took him” (Genesis 5:24), perhaps the colonnades are in heaven.

  525.8 Fomalhaut] In the Northern Hemisphere, a low bright star (brightest in autumn) with no other bright star near.

  526.3 Decius’s cruel age] The Roman emperor Decius around 250 C.E. killed many Christians for not sacrificing to Roman gods.

  526.4 Christian of Thebæan clime] Celibate Christian in Egypt, at modern Luxor.

  526.5 David’s son . . . he of Dan] Probably Amnon (David’s son), who raped his half sister Tamar and was killed by Absalom and his friends. Dan is the place in the north of Israel where Dan the son of Jacob lived. “He” of Dan, a descendant, is Samson, who was betrayed by Delilah and blinded (Judges 14–16).

  526.6 him misloved . . . bride] Most likely Joseph, who flees the persistent advances of Pharaoh’s wife (Genesis 39:7–20), although she is not described as a new wife, a bride.

  526.7 Job whose . . . his ban] Job’s wife’s mockery is described in Job 2:9. Her advice to the afflicted Job: “curse God, and die.” These four stories (526.5–7) deal with men who suffer death, imprisonment, loss of possessions, family, and physical damage (being blinded, being covered with boils), all caused or exacerbated by women. The innocent Tamar would be blamed for occasioning the rape, both of Samson’s wives blamed for betraying him and of Pharaoh’s wife for enticing him. Clarel later remembers the stories of the celibate almoner as the “bodeful text of hermit-rhyme!” (632.12).

  527.9 Passing the love of woman] After Jonathan’s death David laments, “thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women” (2 Samuel 1:26).

  529.4 eremite’s Thebæan flame] During the pe
rsecution by Decius in the third century C.E., when the celibate’s vellum book was written, Paul of Thebes is said to have become the first celibate monk, living many decades in a cave in the Egyptian desert.

  Part Four: Bethlehem

  550.30 Varus’ legions mossy grown?] In 9 C.E. the Roman general Varus lost some 20,000 soldiers and many civilians in a Germanic ambush in the Teutoburg Forest in present-day Lower Saxony.

  551.22 Sad arch between contrasted eras] The winter of 1860–61, while Southern states were seceding (often misapplied to the whole Civil War).

  551.30 A paper pact] The U.S. Constitution.

  552.2 as the fable goes] In Plato’s Republic (Book 10), Socrates’s fable of Er from Pamphylia, on the southern coast of Asia Minor.

  552.19 ship Ark . . . attendant Dove.] Ships hired in 1634 by Cecil Calvert (Lord Baltimore) to carry Catholics to North America, the founders of Maryland.

  552.34 Tilly’s great command] Johann Tserclaes (1559–1632), Count of Tilly, now in Belgium, led Catholics to victories in the Thirty Years’ War.

  555.24 spikenard] Extremely expensive ointment with which Mary, the sister of Lazarus and Martha, anoints the feet of Jesus (John 12:3).

  556.22 the girt Capuchin] Franciscan sect in control of the monastery at Bethlehem.

  558.32–559.2 Sylvanus . . . Pan is dead!] Sylvanus, Roman god of the woods. In Milton’s fantasy poem “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity” pagan forces are overcome and oracles are silent. Plutarch in “The Obsolescence of Oracles” has a divine voice calling to a sailor at sea, asking him to spread the news that the Greek god Pan (associated with Sylvanus) is dead; later a Christian interpretation linked this cessation of the oracles to the birth of Jesus.

  559.4 From man’s deep nature are they rolled] Emerson’s “The Problem”: “Never from lips of cunning fell / The Thrilling Delphic oracle; / Out from the heart of nature rolled / The burdens of the Bible old.”

  560.32 Terrene with heavenly to compare] Melville pays homage to other poets: Virgil in “Eclogues” compares great things with small, and Milton in Paradise Lost compares great things with small and illuminates small things by great (Paradise Regained).

  560.40 shekinah] Glory, dazzling presence of God.

  561.2–3 St. John boy . . . belt of tow] Like a young John the Baptist, in camel hair with a girdle of skin about his loins.

  561.21–34 Lot and Abraham . . . both were wise.] Genesis 13:8–9, 11.

  562.30 Let the horse answer] In his rounds as a custom officer on Manhattan, Melville regularly witnessed extreme brutality to horses.

  563.9 Hughs of Lincoln] Medieval calumny against Jews (the supposed murder of a Christian boy named Hugh) that led to horrors such as the massacre of 150 Jews in Clifford’s Tower in York in 1190.

  566.40–567.1 Louis plied . . . upon himself.] King Louis IX (1214–1270) scourged himself and wore a hair shirt. See also note 328.1.

  568.35 Land named of Behest] “The Promised Land” (with behest in the archaic meaning of promise).

  571.21 Dismembered Poland . . . Ninety-Five] The Partition of 1795, dividing Poland among Prussia, Russia, and Austria.

  571.39 Poland’s place in Thirty-One] Not another partition but the absorption of Poland in 1831 into Russia.

  572.28 Ormus] In Paradise Lost, II.1–2, Satan’s throne outshines even the fabulous wealth of Ormus.

  573.20 slender monk and young] A description closely drawn from John Lloyd Stephens’s 1837 Incidents of Travel.

  574.7 Isaac . . . too young to know?] Too young to know that he might be sacrificed in the desert, as Abraham almost did with Isaac (Genesis 22:10).

  575.2–7 Baldwin . . . Godfrey’s requiem . . . King of Jerusalem] See note 174.7.

  575.37 Archimago’s cave] In The Faerie Queene, this deceitful sorcerer has a hermitage, not a cave.

  580.31 Ignatius] St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556), founder of the Jesuits.

  580.32 Martin] St. Martin of Tours (316–397), who left the Roman army after becoming a Christian; father of monasticism in Gaul.

  581.3–7 Angelo Tancredi . . . the cavalier] Melville could have found Tancredi’s momentous encounter with St. Francis in recent editions of The Life of Saint Francis of Assisi.

  583.22–35 How like a Poor Clare in her cheer . . . passion-flower.] “Cheer” in this context means countenance. In appearance like a Poor Clare, nun of the second oldest Franciscan order (1212). Nature appears dull until the Cordelier (Franciscan) in a Mexican glade perceives emblems of Jesus’s crucifixion in what he names the passionflower (passiflora).

  585.14–17 Paula kneeled . . . renowned Jerome.] Paula, noble Roman who as a wealthy widow in 382 met St. Jerome; in Bethlehem they built a monastery and a convent. Jerome (c. 347–420), of Illyrian origin, studied in Rome, then went to Syria and later the Holy Land. A historian and theologian, he translated parts of the Bible into Latin from Greek and even Hebrew (then neglected as a source).

  590.17 Saadi’s wit] The wit of Saadi of Shiraz, the thirteenth-century Persian poet.

  590.25–33 “Flamen . . . Mythra . . . the sun!”] Flamen, a priest; Mythra, the divinity of light, now extinguished. Skepticism having banished gods, Catholicism (and all Christianity) is dying away like the Persian religions.

  592.30–31 Ethan Allen . . . Herbert lord of Cherbury] Allen (1738–1789), Connecticut-born Vermonter, captured Fort Ticonderoga from the British and later wrote a treatise on Deism. The “Titanic Vermonter” is exalted in Israel Potter as embodying a “peculiar Americanism,” “the western spirit.” Edward Herbert (1582–1648), soldier on the Continent and author of a Deistic book, On Truth.

  593.9–16 legendary grot . . . droppings of Madonna’s breasts . . . Oberon.] The legendary grotto is the Milk Grotto, where Mary is said to have nursed Jesus. When milk from her breasts fell on the floor, the grotto turned white. John Lloyd Stephens in Incidents of Travel says “her milk overflowed.” Like other, similar fantasies about fauns, cherubs, genii, and Oberon, the legend of the Milk Grotto is born of “creative love.”

  595.10–16 Of yore . . . sacred one.”] Hellenic (and Christian) happy frauds, not current archaeological discoveries.

  596.36 owns] Acknowledges.

  596.36–597.7 the lives . . . sinners start.”] People’s actual “lives” have not changed because of Buddha’s teachings, or Confucius’s, or Moses’s Ten Commandments. Only threat of punishment (penalty) inhibits sinners.

  600.37 This great Diana of ill fame!] Democracy.

  602.40 Aurelius Antonine] Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121–180 C.E.), Roman emperor and author of Meditations (on Stoic philosophy).

  612.34–35 Lincoln Hugh . . . Mammon] See note 563.9.

  615.36 grove of Daphne] In northern Syria near Antioch, a grove to Apollo, where excessive indulgence prevailed.

  618.9 Jephthah’s daughter] After winning great battles for Israel, Jephthah promises to sacrifice the first thing that comes out of his door to meet him on his triumphal return. It is his daughter, who accepts her fate and is sacrificed (Judges 11:29–40).

  619.5 malison] Malediction, curse. Isaiah’s prophecy of the destruction of Damascus (Isaiah 7:8, 8:4, 17:1).

  619.9–24 Abana and Pharpar’s streams . . . . . . healed him.”] The leper Naaman foolishly says that “Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus,” are greater than the waters of Israel, but it is the waters of the River Jordan that cure him (2 Kings 5:1–14).

  620.17 spies from Eshcol] In Numbers 13 Moses’s spies return with the report that the land of Canaan flowed with milk and honey but that the inhabitants were men of great stature, descendants of the giant Anak.

  620.33–36 Solomon’s Song . . . Saint Bernard] Berna
rd of Clairvaux (1090–1153), Benedictine monk, preached sermons proving that the Song of Solomon was a religious allegory (not sexual).

  621.8 Bonzes Hafiz’ rhyme construe] The Bonzes (Buddhist monks) misconstrue Hafiz as religious, not sensual.

  624.1 Betwixt a Shushan and a sand] Between the gay young Lyonese and the Franciscan Salvaterra, between eroticism and asceticism.

  627.20 Jesse’s son] David.

  627.21 Adullam’s lair] See note 438.11.

  632.12 bodeful text of hermit-rhyme!] See note 526.7.

  632.24–25 keep far from me . . . Manes and the Manichee!] Clarel rejects the Persian Manes (215–275 C.E.), founder of Manichaeism, for his insistence upon abstinence in most food, drink, wedlock, and any amorous relations.

  634.11–13 Coquimbo’s ground . . . the shock.] Coquimbo, port in Chile; news of an earthquake there reached New York in February 1850, just after Melville’s return from England.

  641.20 Stabat] Latin hymn about Mary’s suffering during her son’s crucifixion.

  641.21 Tenebræ] The extinguishing of candles in the days before Easter.

  641.21–29 when the day . . . anthem of the spring.] In a year when Catholics and all other Christians celebrate Easter on the same day.

  642.35–36 Thammuz’s spring . . . Joel’s glade?] A pagan god may console through seasonal rebirth but to the Hebrew prophet good cheer can be a mockery: “The vine is dried up, and the fig tree languisheth; the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, even all the trees of the field, are withered: because joy is withered away from the sons of men” (Joel 1:12).

  JOHN MARR AND OTHER SAILORS WITH SOME SEA-PIECES

  664.24 Uzzite’s black shard] See Job 1:1 (Job “was a man in the land of Uz”) and Job 2:8, where he scrapes his sore boils with a potsherd—pot-shard.

  666.36 Xeres] Jerez, in Spain.

  667.3 Pecksniff] The greedy architect in Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit (1842–44).

  668.22 King Og] A giant (Deuteronomy 3:11).