Herman Melville- Complete Poems

by Herman Melville

  Not feel a kin emotion bred

  At glimpse of face of countryman

  Tho’ stranger? Yes, a Jewess—born

  In Gentile land where nature’s wreath

  Exhales the first creation’s breath—

  The waste of Judah made her lorn.

  The student, sharing not her blood,

  Nearer in tie of spirit stood

  Than he she called Rabboni. So

  In Agar’s liking did he grow—

  Deeper in heart of Ruth; and learned

  The more how both for freedom yearned;

  And much surmised, too, left unsaid

  By the tried mother and the maid.

  Howe’er dull natures read the signs

  Where untold grief a hermit pines—

  The anxious, strained, weak, nervous air

  Of trouble, which like shame may wear

  Her gaberdine; though soul in feint

  May look pathetic self-restraint,

  For ends pernicious; real care,

  Sorrow made dumb where duties move,

  Never eluded love, true love,

  A deep diviner.

  Here, for space

  The past of wife and daughter trace.

  Of Agar’s kin for many an age

  Not one had seen the heritage

  Of Judah; Gentile lands detained.

  So, while they clung to Moses’ lore

  Far from the land his guidance gained,

  ’Twas Eld’s romance, a treasured store

  Like plate inherited. In fine

  It graced, in seemly way benign,

  That family feeling of the Jew,

  Which hallowed by each priestly rite,

  Makes home a temple—sheds delight

  Naomi ere her trial knew.

  Happy was Agar ere the seas

  She crossed for Zion. Pride she took—

  Pride, if in small felicities—

  Pride in her little court, a nook

  Where morning-glories starred the door:

  So sweet without, so snug within.

  At sunny matin meal serene

  Her damask cloth she’d note. It bore

  In Hebrew text about the hem,

  Mid broidered cipher and device,

  “IF I FORGET THEE, O JERUSALEM!”

  And swam before her humid eyes,

  In rainbowed distance, Paradise.

  Faith, ravished, followed Fancy’s path

  In more of bliss than nature hath.

  But ah, the dream to test by deed,

  To seek to handle the ideal

  And make a sentiment serve need:

  To try to realize the unreal!

  ’Twas not that Agar reasoned—nay,

  She did but feel, true woman’s way.

  What solace from the desert win

  Far from known friends, familiar kin?

  How nearer God? The chanted Zion

  Showed graves, but graves to gasp and die on.

  Nathan, her convert, for his sake

  Grief had she stifled long; but now,

  The nursling one lay pale and low.

  Oft of that waxen face she’d think

  Beneath the stones; her heart would sink

  And in hard bitterness repine,

  “Slim grass, poor babe, to grave of thine!”

  Ruth, too, when here a child she came,

  Would blurt in reckless childhood’s way,

  “’Tis a bad place.” But the sad dame

  Would check; and, as the maiden grew,

  Counsel she kept—too much she knew.

  But how to give her feelings play?

  With cherished pots of herbs and flowers

  She strove to appease the hungry hours;

  Each leaf bedewed with many a tear

  For Gentile land, how green and dear!

  What tho’ the dame and daughter both

  In synagogue, behind the grate

  Dividing sexes, oftimes sat?

  It was with hearts but chill and loath;

  Never was heaven served by that

  Cold form.—With Clarel seemed to come

  A waftage from the fields of home,

  Crossing the wind from Judah’s sand,

  Reviving Agar, and of power

  To make the bud in Ruth expand

  With promise of unfolding hour.

  28. TOMB AND FOUNTAIN

  Clarel and Ruth—might it but be

  That range they could green uplands free

  By gala orchards, when they fling

  Their bridal favors, buds of Spring;

  And, dreamy in her morning swoon,

  The lady of the night, the moon,

  Looks pearly as the blossoming;

  And youth and nature’s fond accord

  Wins Eden back, that tales abstruse

  Of Christ, the crucified, Pain’s Lord,

  Seem foreign—forged—incongruous.

  Restrictions of that Eastern code

  Immured the maiden. From abode

  Frequent nor distant she withdrew

  Except with Jewess, scarce with Jew.

  So none the less in former mode,

  Nehemiah still with Clarel went,

  Who grew in liking and content

  In company of one whose word

  Babbled of Ruth——“My bird—God’s bird.”

  The twain were one mild morning led

  Out to a waste where beauty clings,

  Vining a grot how doubly dead:

  The rifled Sepulcher of Kings.

  Hewn from the rock a sunken space

  Conducts to garlands—fit for vase—

  In sculptured frieze above a tomb:

  Palm leaves, pine apples, grapes. These bloom,

  Involved in death—to puzzle us—

  As ’twere thy line, Theocritus,

  Dark Joel’s text of terror threading:

  Yes, strange that Pocahontas-wedding

  Of contraries in old belief—

  Hellenic cheer, Hebraic grief.

  The homicide Herods, men aver,

  lnurned behind that wreathage were.

  But who is he uncovered seen,

  Profound in shadow of the tomb

  Reclined, with meditative mien

  Intent upon the tracery?

  A low wind waves his Lydian hair:

  A funeral man, yet richly fair—

  Fair as the sabled violets be.

  The frieze and this secluded one,

  Retaining each a separate tone,

  Beauty yet harmonized in grace

  And contrast to the barren place.

  But noting that he was discerned,

  Salute the stranger made, then turned

  And shy passed forth in obvious state

  Of one who would keep separate.

  Those cells explored, thro’ dale they paced

  Downward, and won Moriah’s walls

  And seated them. Clarel recalls

  The colonnades that Herod traced—

  Herod, magnific Idumæan—

  In marble along the mountain flank:

  Column on column, rank on rank

  Above the valley Tyropœon.

  Eastward, in altitude they view

  Across Jehoshaphat, a crag

  Of sepulchers and huts. Thereto

  They journey. But awhile they lag

  Beneath, to mark the tombs in row

  Pierced square along the gloomy steep

  In beetling broadside, and with show
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br />   Of port-holes in black battle-ship.

  They climb; and Clarel turning saw

  Their late resort, the hill of law—

  Moriah, above the Kedron’s bed;

  And, turreting his aged head,

  The angle of King David’s wall—

  Acute seen here, here too best scanned,

  As ’twere that cliff, tho’ not so tall,

  Nor tempest-sculptured therewithal,

  Envisaged in Franconian land,

  The marvel of the Pass.

  Anon

  A call he hears behind, in note

  Familiar, being man’s; remote

  No less, and strange in hollowed tone

  As ’twere a voice from out the tomb.

  A tomb it is; and he in gloom

  Of porch there biddeth them begone.

  Clings to his knee a toddling one

  Bewildered poising in wee hand

  A pictured page—Nehemiah’s boon—

  He passive in the sun at stand.

  Morosely then the Arab turns,

  Snatches the gift, and drops and spurns.

  As down now from the crag they wend

  Reverted glance see Clarel lend:

  Thou guest of Death, which in his house

  Sleep’st nightly, mayst thou not espouse

  His daughter, Peace?

  Aslant they come

  Where, hid in shadow of the rocks,

  Stone steps descend unto Siloam.

  Proof to the fervid noon-day tide

  Reflected from the glen’s steep side,

  Moist ledge with ledge here interlocks,

  Vaulting a sunken grotto deep.

  Down there, as quiet as in sleep,

  Anew the stranger they descried

  Sitting upon a step full low,

  Watching the fountain’s troubled tide

  Which after ebb began to flow,

  Gurgling from viewless caves. The lull

  Broke by the flood is wonderful.

  Science explains it. Bides no less

  The true, innate mysteriousness.

  Through him there might the vision flit

  Of angel in Bethesda’s pool

  With porches five, so troubling it

  That whoso bathed then was made whole?

  Or, by an equal dream beguiled,

  Did he but list the fountain moan

  Like Amman’s in the Libyan wild,

  For muse and oracle both gone?

  By chance a jostled pebble there

  Slipped from the surface down the stair.

  It jarred—it broke the brittle spell:

  Siloam was but a rural well.

  Clarel who could again but shun

  To obtrude on the secluded one,

  Turned to depart.—“Ere yet we go,”

  Said Nehemiah, “I will below:

  Dim be mine eyes, more dim they grow:

  I’ll wash them in these waters cool,

  As did the blind the Master sent,

  And who came seeing from this pool;”

  And down the grotto-stairs he went.

  The stranger, just ascending, stood;

  And, as the votary laved his eyes,

  He marked, looked up, and Clarel viewed,

  And they exchanged quick sympathies

  Though but in glance, moved by that act

  Of one whose faith transfigured fact.

  A bond seemed made between them there;

  And presently the trio fare

  Over Kedron, and in one accord

  Of quietude and chastened tone

  Approach the spot, tradition’s own,

  For ages held the garden of Our Lord.

  29. THE RECLUSE

  Ere yet they win that verge and line,

  Reveal the stranger. Name him—Vine.

  His home to tell—kin, tribe, estate—

  Would naught avail. Alighting grow,

  As on the tree the mistletoe,

  All gifts unique. In seeds of fate

  Borne on the winds these emigrate

  And graft the stock.

  Vine’s manner shy

  A clog, a hindrance might imply;

  A lack of parlor-wont. But grace

  Which is in substance deep and grain

  May, peradventure, well pass by

  The polish of veneer. No trace

  Of passion’s soil or lucre’s stain,

  Though life was now half ferried o’er.

  If use he served not, but forbore—

  Such indolence might still but pine

  In dearth of rich incentive high:

  Apollo slave in Mammon’s mine?

  Better Admetus’ shepherd lie.

  A charm of subtle virtue shed

  A personal influence coveted,

  Whose source was difficult to tell

  As ever was that perfumed spell

  Of Paradise-flowers invisible

  Which angels round Cecilia bred.

  A saint then do we here unfold?

  Nay, the ripe flush, Venetian mould

  Evinced no nature saintly fine,

  But blood like swart Vesuvian wine.

  What cooled the current? Under cheer

  Of opulent softness, reigned austere

  Control of self. Flesh, but scarce pride,

  Was curbed: desire was mortified;

  But less indeed by moral sway

  Than doubt if happiness thro’ clay

  Be reachable. No sackclothed man;

  Howbeit, in sort Carthusian

  Tho’ born a Sybarite. And yet

  Not beauty might he all forget,

  The beauty of the world, and charm:

  He prized it tho’ it scarce might warm.

  Like to the nunnery’s denizen

  His virgin soul communed with men

  But thro’ the wicket. Was it clear

  This coyness bordered not on fear—

  Fear or an apprehensive sense?

  Not wholly seemed it diffidence

  Recluse. Nor less did strangely wind

  Ambiguous elfishness behind

  All that: an Ariel unknown.

  It seemed his very speech in tone

  Betrayed disuse. Thronged streets astir

  To Vine but ampler cloisters were.

  Cloisters? No monk he was, allow;

  But gleamed the richer for the shade

  About him, as in sombre glade

  Of Virgil’s wood the Sibyl’s Golden Bough.

  30. THE SITE OF THE PASSION

  And wherefore by the convents be

  Gardens? Ascetics roses twine?

  Nay, but there is a memory.

  Within a garden walking see

  The angered God. And where the vine

  And olive in the darkling hours

  Inweave green sepulchers of bowers—

  Who, to defend us from despair—

  Pale undergoes the passion there

  In solitude? Yes, memory

  Links Eden and Gethsemane;

  So that not meaningless in sway

  Gardens adjoin the convents gray.

  On Salem’s hill in Solomon’s years

  Of gala, O the happy town!

  In groups the people sauntered down,

  And, Kedron crossing, lightly wound

  Where now the tragic grove appears,

  Then palmy, and a pleasure-ground.

  The student and companions win

  The wicket—pause
, and enter in.

  By roots strapped down in fold on fold—

  Gnarled into wens and knobs and knees—

  In olives, monumental trees,

  The Pang’s survivors they behold.

  A wizened blue fruit drops from them,

  Nipped harvest of Jerusalem.

  Wistful here Clarel turned toward Vine,

  And would have spoken; but as well

  Hail Dathan swallowed in the mine—

  Tradition, legend, lent such spell

  And rapt him in remoteness so.

  Meanwhile, in shade the olives throw,

  Nehemiah pensive sat him down

  And turned the chapter in St John.

  What frame of mind may Clarel woo?

  He the night-scene in picture drew—

  The band which came for sinless blood

  With swords and staves, a multitude.

  They brush the twigs, small birds take wing,

  The dead boughs crackle, lanterns swing,

  Till lo, they spy them thro’ the wood.

  “Master!”—’Tis Judas. Then the kiss.

  And He, He falters not at this—

  Speechless, unspeakably submiss:

  The fulsome serpent on the cheek

  Sliming: endurance more than meek—

  Endurance of the fraud foreknown,

  And fiend-heart in the human one.

  Ah, now the pard on Clarel springs:

  The Passion’s narrative plants stings.

  To break away, he turns and views

  The white-haired under olive bowed

  Immersed in Scripture; and he woos—

  “Whate’er the chapter, read aloud.”

  The saint looked up, but with a stare

  Absent and wildered, vacant there.

  As part to kill time, part for task

  Some shepherd old pores over book—

  Shelved farm-book of his life forepast

  When he bestirred him and amassed;

  If chance one interrupt, and ask—

  What read you? he will turn a look

  Which shows he knows not what he reads,

  Or knowing, he but weary heeds,

  Or scarce remembers; here much so

  With Nehemiah, dazed out and low.

  And presently—to intercept—

  Over Clarel, too, strange numbness crept.

  A monk, custodian of the ground,

  Drew nigh, and showed him by the steep

  The rock or legendary mound

  Where James and Peter fell asleep.

  Dully the pilgrim scanned the spot,

  Nor spake.—“Signor, and think’st thou not