His bridle turns, adjusts his seat
And holsters where the pistols be,
Nor taking leave like Christian sweet,
(Quite mindless of Paul’s courtesy)
With dumb indomitable chin
Straight back he aims thro’ Adommin,
Alone, nor blandly self-sustained—
Robber and robber-glen disdained.
As stiff he went, his humor dark
From Vine provoked a vivid spark—
Derisive comment, part restrained.
He passes. Well, peace with him go.
If truth have painted heart but grim,
None here hard measure meant for him;
Nay, Haytian airs around him blow,
And woo and win to cast behind
The harsher and inclement mind.
But needs narrate what followed now.
“Part from us,” Derwent cried, “that way?
I fear we have offended. Nay,
What other cause?”—
“The desert, see:
He and the desert don’t agree,”
Said Rolfe; “or rather, let me say
He can’t provoke a quarrel here
With blank indifference so drear:
Ever the desert waives dispute,
Cares not to argue, bides but mute.
Besides, no topographic cheer:
Surveyor’s tape don’t come in play;
The same with which upon a day
He upon all fours soused did roam
Measuring the sub-ducts of Siloam.
Late asking him in casual way
Something about the Tomb’s old fane,
These words I got: ‘Sir, I don’t know;
But once I dropped in—not again;
’Tis monkish, ’tis a raree-show—
A raree-show. Saints, sites, and stuff.
Had I my will I’d strip it, strip!’
I knew ’twere vain to try rebuff;
But asked, ‘Did Paul, embarked in ship
With Castor and Pollux for a sign
Deem it incumbent there to rip
From stern and prow the name and shrine?’
‘Saint Paul, sir, had not zeal enough;
I always thought so;’ and went on:
‘Where stands this fane, this Calvary one
Alleged? why, sir, within the site
Of Herod’s wall? Can that be right?’
But why detail. Suffice, in few,
Even Zion’s hill, he doubts that too;
Nay, Sinai in his dry purview
He’s dubious if, as placed, it meet
Requirements.”
“Why then do his feet
Tread Judah? no good end is won;”
Said Derwent.
“Curs need have a bone
To mumble, though but dry nor sweet.
Nay, that’s too harsh and overdone.
’Tis still a vice these carpers brew—
They try us—us set carping too.”
“Ah well, quick then in thought we’ll shun him,
And so foreclose all strictures on him.
Howbeit, this confess off-hand:
Amiss is robed in gown and band
A disenchanter.—Friend, the wine!”
The banker passed it without word.
Sad looked he: Why, these fools are stirred
About a nothing!—Plain to see
Such comradeship did ill agree:
Pedants, and poor! nor used to dine
In ease of table-talk benign—
Steeds, pictures, ladies, gold, Tokay,
Gardens and baths, the English news,
Stamboul, the market—gain or lose?
He turned to where young Glaucon lay,
Who now to startled speech was won:
“Look, is he crazy? see him there!”
The saint it was with busy care
Flinging aside stone after stone,
Yet feebly, nathless as he wrought
In charge imposed though not unloved;
While every stone that he removed
Laid bare but more. The student sighed,
So well he kenned his ways distraught
At influx of his eldritch tide.
But Derwent, hastening to the spot,
Exclaimed, “How now? surely, ’tis not
To mend the way?”
With patient look,
Poising a stone as ’twere a clod:
“All things are possible with God;
The humblest helper will he brook.”
Derwent stood dumb; but quick in heart
Conjecturing how it was, addressed
Some friendly words, and slid apart;
And, yet while by that scene impressed,
Came, as it chanced, where unbecalmed
Mortmain aloof sat all disarmed—
Legs lengthwise crossed, head hanging low,
The skull-cap pulled upon the brow,
Hands groping toward the knees: “Then where?
A Thug, the sword-fish roams the sea—
The falcon’s pirate in the air;
Betwixt the twain, where shalt thou flee,
Poor flying-fish? whither repair?
What other element for thee?
Whales, mighty whales have felt the wound—
Plunged bleeding thro’ the blue profound;
But where their fangs the sand-sharks keep
Be shallows worse than any deep.”—
Hardly that chimed with Derwent’s bell:
Him too he left.
When it befell
That new they started on their way;
To turn the current or allay,
He talked with Clarel, and first knew
Nehemiah’s conceit about the Jew:
The ways prepared, the tilth restored
For the second coming of Our Lord.
Rolfe overheard: “And shall we say
That this is craze? or but, in brief,
Simplicity of plain belief?
The early Christians, how did they?
For His return looked any day.”
From dwelling on Rolfe’s thought, ere long
On Rolfe himself the student broods:
Surely I would not think a wrong;
Nor less I’ve shrunk from him in moods.
A bluntness is about him set:
Truth’s is it? But he winneth yet
Through taking qualities which join.
Make these the character? the rest
But rim? On Syracusan coin
The barbarous letters shall invest
The relievo’s infinite of charm.—
I know not. Does he help, or harm?
11. OF DESERTS
Tho’ frequent in the Arabian waste
The pilgrim, up ere dawn of day,
Inhale thy wafted musk, Cathay;
And Adam’s primal joy may taste,
Beholding all the pomp of night
Bee’d thick with stars in swarms how bright;
And so, rides on alert and braced—
Tho’ brisk at morn the pilgrim start,
Ere long he’ll know in weary hour
Small love of deserts, if their power
Make to retreat upon the heart
Their own forsakenness.
Darwin quotes
From Shelley, that forever floats
Over all desert places known,
Mysterious doubt—an awful one.
He quotes, adopts it. Is it
true?
Let instinct vouch; let poetry
Science and instinct here agree,
For truth requires strong retinue.
Waste places are where yet is given
A charm, a beauty from the heaven
Above them, and clear air divine—
Translucent æther opaline;
And some in evening’s early dew
Put on illusion of a guise
Which Tantalus might tantalize
Afresh; ironical unrolled
Like Western counties all in grain
Ripe for the sickleman and wain;
Or, tawnier than the Guinea gold,
More like a lion’s skin unfold:
Attest the desert opening out
Direct from Cairo by the Gate
Of Victors, whence the annual rout
To Mecca bound, precipitate
Their turbaned frenzy.—
Sands immense
Impart the oceanic sense:
The flying grit like scud is made:
Pillars of sand which whirl about
Or arc along in colonnade,
True kin be to the water-spout.
Yonder on the horizon, red
With storm, see there the caravan
Straggling long-drawn, dispirited;
Mark how it labors like a fleet
Dismasted, which the cross-winds fan
In crippled disaster of retreat
From battle.—
Sinai had renown
Ere thence was rolled the thundered Law;
Ever a terror wrapped its crown;
Never did shepherd dare to draw
Too nigh (Josephus saith) for awe
Of one, some ghost or god austere—
Hermit unknown, dread mountaineer.—
When comes the sun up over Nile
In cloudlessness, what cloud is cast
O’er Lybia? Thou shadow vast
Of Cheops’ indissoluble pile,
Typ’st thou the imperishable Past
In empire posthumous and reaching sway
Projected far across to time’s remotest day?
But curb.—Such deserts in air-zone
Or object lend suggestive tone,
Redeeming them.
For Judah here—
Let Erebus her rival own:
’Tis horror absolute—severe,
Dead, livid, honey-combed, dumb, fell—
A caked depopulated hell;
Yet so created, judged by sense,
And visaged in significance
Of settled anger terrible.
Profoundly cloven through the scene
Winds Kedron—word (the scholar saith)
Importing anguish hard on death.
And aptly may such named ravine
Conduct unto Lot’s mortal Sea
In cleavage from Gethsemane
Where it begins.
But why does man
Regard religiously this tract
Cadaverous and under ban
Of blastment? Nay, recall the fact
That in the pagan era old
When bolts, deemed Jove’s, tore up the mound,
Great stones the simple peasant rolled
And built a wall about the gap
Deemed hallowed by the thunder-clap.
So here: men here adore this ground
Which doom hath smitten. ’Tis a land
Direful yet holy—blest tho’ banned.
But to pure hearts it yields no fear;
And John, he found wild honey here.
12. THE BANKER
Infer the wilds which next pertain.
Though travel here be still a walk,
Small heart was theirs for easy talk.
Oblivious of the bridle-rein
Rolfe fell to Lethe altogether,
Bewitched by that uncanny weather
Of sultry cloud. And home-sick grew
The banker. In his reverie blue
The cigarette, a summer friend,
Went out between his teeth—could lend
No solace, soothe him nor engage.
And now disrelished he each word
Of sprightly, harmless persiflage
Wherewith young Glaucon here would fain
Evince a jaunty disregard.
But hush betimes o’ertook the twain—
The more impressive, it may be,
For that the senior, somewhat spent,
Florid overmuch and corpulent,
Labored in lungs, and audibly.
Rolfe, noting that the sufferer’s steed
Was far less easy than his own,
Relieved him in his hour of need
By changing with him; then in tone
Aside, half musing, as alone,
“Unwise he is to venture here,
Poor fellow; ’tis but sorry cheer
For Mammon. Ill would it accord
If nabob with asthmatic breath
Lighted on Holbein’s Dance of Death
Sly slipped among his prints from Claude.
Cosmetic-users scarce are bold
To face a skull. That sachem old
Whose wigwam is man’s heart within—
How taciturn, and yet can speak,
Imparting more than books can win;
Not Pleasure’s darling cares to seek
Such counselor: the worse he fares;
Since—heedless, taken unawares—
Arrest he finds.—Look: at yon ground
How starts he now! So Abel’s hound,
Snuffing his prostrate master wan,
Shrank back from earth’s first murdered man.—
But friend, how thrivest?” turning there
To Derwent. He, with altered air,
Made vague rejoinder, nor serene:
His soul, if not cast down, was vexed
By Nature in this dubious scene:
His theory she harsh perplexed—
The more so for wild Mortmain’s mien:
And Nehemiah in eldritch cheer:
“Lord, now Thou goest forth from Seir;
Lord, now from Edom marchest Thou!”—
Shunning the Swede—disturbed to know
The saint in strange clairvoyance so,
Clarel yet turned to meet the grace
Of one who not infected dwelt—
Yes, Vine, who shared his horse’s pace
In level sameness, as both felt
At home in dearth.
But unconcern
That never knew Vine’s thoughtful turn
The venerable escort showed:
True natives of the waste abode,
They moved like insects of the leaf—
Tint, tone adapted to the fief.
13. FLIGHT OF THE GREEKS
“King, who betwixt the cross and sword
On ashes died in cowl and cord—
In desert died; and, if thy heart
Betrayed thee not, from life didst part
A martyr for thy martyred Lord;
Anointed one and undefiled—
O warrior manful, tho’ a child
In simple faith—St. Louis! rise,
And teach us out of holy eyes
Whence came thy trust.”
So Rolfe, and shrank,
Awed by that region dread and great;
Thence led to take to heart the fate
Of one who tried in such a blank,
Believed—and died.
>
Lurching was seen
An Arab tall, on camel lean,
Up laboring from a glen’s remove,
His long lance upright fixed above
The gun across the knee in guard.
So rocks in hollow trough of sea
A wreck with one gaunt mast, and yard
Displaced and slanting toward the lee.
Closer he drew; with visage mute,
Austere in passing made salute.
Such courtesy may vikings lend
Who through the dreary Hecla wend.
Under gun, lance, and scabbard hacked
Pressed Nehemiah; with ado
High he reached up an Arab tract
From the low ass—“Christ’s gift to you!”
With clatter of the steel he bore
The lofty nomad bent him o’er
In grave regard. The camel too
Her crane-like neck swerved round to view;
Nor more to camel than to man
Inscrutable the ciphers ran.
But wonted unto arid cheer,
The beast, misjudging, snapped it up,
And would have munched, but let it drop;
Her master, poling down his spear
Transfixed the page and brought it near,
Nor stayed his travel.
On they went
Through solitudes, till made intent
By small sharp shots which stirred rebound
In echo. Over upland drear
On tract of less obstructed ground
Came fairly into open sight
A mounted train in tulip plight:
Ten Turks, whereof advanced rode four,
With leveled pistols, left and right
Graceful diverging, as in plume
Feather from feather. So brave room
They make for turning toward each shore
Ambiguous in nooks of blight,
Discharging shots; then reunite,
And, with obeisance bland, adore
Their prince, a fair youth, who, behind—
’Tween favorites of equal age,
Brilliant in paynim equipage—
With Eastern dignity how sweet,
Nods to their homage, pleased to mind
Their gallant curvets. Still they meet,
Salute and wheel, and him precede,
As in a pleasure-park or mead.
The escorts join; and some would take
To parley, as is wont. The Druze,
Howbeit, hardly seems to choose
The first advances here to make;
Nor does he shun. Alert is seen
One in voluminous turban green,
Beneath which in that barren place
Herman Melville- Complete Poems Page 32