Sheltered he looks as by the grace
Of shady palm-tuft. Vernal he
In sacerdotal chivalry:
That turban by its hue declares
That the great Prophet’s blood he shares:
Kept as the desert stallions be,
’Tis an attested pedigree.
But ah, the bigot, he could lower
In mosque on the intrusive Giaour.
To make him truculent for creed
Family-pride joined personal greed.
Tho’ foremost here his word he vents—
Officious in the conference,
In rank and sway he ranged, in sooth,
Behind that fine sultanic youth
Which held his place apart, and, cool,
In lapse or latency of rule
Seemed mindless of the halting train
And pilgrims there of Franquestan
Or land of Franks. Remiss he wore
An indolent look superior.
His grade might justify the air:
The viceroy of Damascus’ heir.
His father’s jurisdiction sweeps
From Lebanon to Amman’s steeps.
Return he makes from mission far
To independent tribes of war
Beyond the Hauran. In advance
Of the main escort, gun and lance,
He aims for Salem back.
This learned,
In anxiousness the banker yearned
To join; nor Glaucon seemed averse.
’Twas quick resolved, and soon arranged
Through fair diplomacy of purse
And Eastern compliments exchanged.
Their wine, in pannier of the mule,
Upon the pilgrims they bestow:
“And pledge us, friends, in valley cool,
If such this doleful road may know:
Farewell!” And so the Moslem train
Received these Christians, happy twain.
They fled. And thou? The way is dun;
Why further follow the Emir’s son?
Scarce yet the thought may well engage
To lure thee thro’ these leafless bowers,
That little avails a pilgrimage
Whose road but winds among the flowers.
Part here, then, would ye win release
From ampler dearth; part, and in peace.
Nay, part like Glaucon, part with song:
The note receding dies along:
“Tarry never there
Where the air
Lends a lone Hadean spell—
Where the ruin and the wreck
Vine and ivy never deck,
And wizard wan and sibyl dwell:
There, oh, beware!
“Rather seek the grove—
Thither rove,
Where the leaf that falls to ground
In a violet upsprings,
And the oracle that sings
Is the bird above the mound:
There, tarry there!”
14. BY ACHOR
Jerusalem, the mountain town
Is based how far above the sea;
But down, a lead-line’s long reach down,
A deep-sea lead, beneath the zone
Of ocean’s level, heaven’s decree
Has sunk the pool whose deeps submerged
The doomed Pentapolis fire-scourged.
Long then the slope, though varied oft,
From Zion to the seats abject;
For rods and roods ye wind aloft
By verges where the pulse is checked;
And chief both hight and steepness show
Ere Achor’s gorge the barrier rends
And like a thunder-cloud impends
Ominous over Jericho.
Hard by the brink the Druze leads on,
But halts at a projecting crown
Of cliff, and beckons them. Nor goat
Nor fowler ranging far and high
Scales such a steep; nor vulture’s eye
Scans one more lone. Deep down in throat
It shows a sooty black.
“A forge
Abandoned,” Rolfe said, “thus may look.”
“Yea,” quoth the saint, “and read the Book:
Flames, flames have forked in Achor’s gorge.”
His wizard vehemence surprised:
Some new illusion they surmised;
Not less authentic text he took:
“Yea, after slaughter made at Ai
When Joshua’s three thousand fled,
Achan the thief they made to die—
They stoned him in this hollow here—
They burned him with his children dear;
Among them flung his ingot red
And scarlet robe of Babylon:
Meet end for Carmi’s wicked son
Because of whom they failed at Ai:
’Twas meet the trespasser should die;
Yea, verily.”—His visage took
The tone of that uncanny nook.
To Rolfe here Derwent: “Study him;
Then weigh that most ungenial rule
Of Moses and the austere school
Which e’en our saint can make so grim—
At least while Achor feeds his eyes.”
“But here speaks Nature otherwise?”
Asked Rolfe; “in region roundabout
She’s Calvinistic if devout
In all her aspect.”—
Vine, o’ercast,
Estranged rode in thought’s hid repast.
Clarel, receptive, saw and heard,
Learning, unlearning, word by word.
Erelong the wilds condense the ill—
They hump it into that black Hill
Named from the Forty Days and Nights,
The Quarantania’s sum of blights.
Up from the gorge it grows, it grows:
Hight sheer, sheer depth, and death’s repose.
Sunk in the gulf the wave disowns,
Stranded lay ancient torrent-stones.
These Mortmain marks: “Ah, from your deep
Turn ye, appeal ye to the steep?
But that looks off, and everywhere
Descries but worlds more waste, more bare.”
Flanked by the crag and glen they go.
Ahead, erelong in greeting show
The mounts of Moab, o’er the vale
Of Jordan opening into view,
With cloud-born shadows sweeping thro’.
The Swede, intent: “Lo, how they trail,
The mortcloths in the funeral
Of gods!”
Although he naught confessed,
In Derwent, marking there the scene,
What interference was expressed
As of harsh grit in oiled machine—
Disrelish grating interest:
Howbeit, this he tried to screen.
“Pisgah!” cried Rolfe, and pointed him.
“Peor, too—ay, long Abarim
The ridge. Well, well: for thee I sigh,
Poor Moses. Saving Jericho
And her famed palms in Memphian row,
No cheerful landscape met thine eye;
Unless indeed (yon Pisgah’s high)
Was caught, beyond each mount and plain,
The blue, blue Mediterranean.”
“And might he then for Egypt sigh?”
Here prompted Rolfe; but no reply;
And Rolfe went on: “Balboa’s ken
Roved in fine sweep from Darien:
Bright capes advancing, bays retreating—
Green land, blue sea in charm competing!”
Meantime, with slant reverted eyes
Vine marked the Crag of Agonies.
Exceeding high (as Matthew saith)
It shows from skirt of that wild path
Bare as an iceberg seamed by rain
Toppling awash in foggy main
Off Labrador. Grottoes Vine viewed
Upon the flank—or cells or tombs—
Void as the iceberg’s catacombs
Of frost. He starts. A form endued
With living guise, from ledges dim
Leans as if looking down toward him.
Not pointing out the thing he saw
Vine watched it, but it showed no claw
Of hostile purpose; tho’ indeed
Robbers and outlaws armed have dwelt
Vigilant by those caves where knelt
Of old the hermits of the creed.
Beyond, they win a storied fount
Which underneath the higher mount
Gurgles, clay-white, and downward sets
Toward Jericho in rivulets,
Which—much like children whose small mirth
Not funerals can stay—through dearth
Run babbling. One old humpbacked tree,
Sad grandam whom no season charms,
Droops o’er the spring her withered arms;
And stones as in a ruin laid,
Like penitential benches be
Where silent thickets fling a shade
And gather dust. Here halting, here
Awhile they rest and try the cheer.
15. THE FOUNTAIN
It brake, it brake how long ago,
That morn which saw thy marvel done,
Elisha—healing of the spring!
A good deed lives, the doer low:
See how the waters eager run
With bounty which they chiming bring:
So out of Eden’s bounds afar
Hymned Pison through green Havilah!
But ill those words in tone impart
The simple feelings in the heart
Of Nehemiah—full of the theme,
Standing beside the marge, with cup,
And pearls of water-beads adroop
Down thinnish beard of silvery gleam.
“Truly,” said Derwent, glad to note
That Achor found her antidote,
“Truly, the fount wells grateful here.”
Then to the student: “For the rest,
The site is pleasant; nor unblest
These thickets by their shade endear.”
Assent half vacant Clarel gave,
Watching that miracle the wave.
Said Rolfe, reclining by the rill,
“Needs life must end or soon or late:
Perchance set down it is in fate
That fail I must ere we fulfill
Our travel. Should it happen true—
Attention, pray—I mend my will,
And name executors in you:
Bury me by the road, somewhere
Near spring or brook. Palms plant me there,
And seats with backs to them, all stone:
In peace then go. The years shall run,
And green my grave shall be, and play
The part of host to all that stray
In desert: water, shade, and rest
Their entertainment. So I’ll win
Balm to my soul by each poor guest
That solaced leaves the Dead Man’s Inn.
But charges, mind, yourselves defray—
Seeing I’ve naught.”
Where thrown he lay,
Vine, sensitive, suffused did show,
Yet looked not up, but seemed to weigh
The nature of the heart whose trim
Of quaint goodfellowship could so
Strike on a chord long slack in him.
But how may spirit quick and deep
A constancy unfreakish keep?
A reed there shaken fitfully
He marks: “Was’t this we came to see
In wilderness?” and rueful smiled.
The meek one, otherwise beguiled,
Here chancing now the ass to note
Languidly munching straw and bran,
Drew nigh, and smoothed the roughened coat,
And gave her bread, the wheaten grain.
Vine watches; and his aspect knows
A flush of diffident humor: “Nay,
Me too, me too let wait, I pray,
On our snubbed kin here;” and he rose.
Erelong, alert the escort show:
’Tis stirrups. But the Swede moved not,
Aloof abiding in dark plot
Made by the deeper shadow: “Go—
My horse lead; but for me, I stay;
Some bread—there, that small loaf will do:
It is my whim—my whim, I say;
Mount, heed not me.”—“And how long, pray?”
Asked Derwent, startled: “eve draws on:
Ye would not tarry here alone?”
“Thou man of God, nor desert here,
Nor Zin, nor Obi, yieldeth fear
If God but be—but be! This waste—
Soon shall night fold the hemisphere;
But safer then to lay me down,
Here, by yon evil Summit faced—
Safer than in the cut-throat town
Though on the church-steps. Go from me—
Begone! To-morrow or next day
Jordan ye greet, then round ye sway
And win Lot’s marge. In sight ye’ll be:
I’ll intercept. Ride on, go—nay,
Bewitched, why gape ye so at me?
Shall man not take the natural way
With nature? Tut, fling me the cloak!”
Away, precipitate he broke,
The skull-cap glooming thro’ the glade:
They paused, nor ventured to invade.
While so, not unconcerned, they stood,
The Druze said, “Well, let be. Why chafe?
Nights here are mild; one’s pretty safe
When fearless.—Belex! come, the road!”
16. NIGHT IN JERICHO
Look how a pine in luckless land
By fires autumnal overrun,
Abides a black extinguished brand
Gigantic—killed, not overthrown;
And high upon the horny bough
Perches the bandit captain-crow
And caws unto his troop afar
Of foragers: much so, in scar
Of blastment, looms the Crusaders’ Tower
On the waste verge of Jericho:
So the dun sheik in lawless power
Kings it aloft in sombre robe,
Lord of the tawny Arab mob
To which, upon the plains in view,
He shouts down his wild hullabaloo.
There on the tower, through eve’s delay
The pilgrims tarry, till for boon,
Launched up from Nebo far away,
Balloon-like rose the nibbled moon—
Nibbled, being after full one day.
Intent they watched the planet’s rise—
Familiar, tho’ in strangest skies.
The ascending orb of furrowed gold,
Contracting, changed, and silvery rolled
In violet heaven. The desert brown,
Dipped in the dream of argent light,
Like iron plated, took a tone
Transmuting it; and Ammon shone
In peaks of Paradise—so bright.
They gazed. Rolfe brake upon the calm:
“O haunted place, O powerful charm!
Were now Elijah’s chariot seen
(And yonder, read we writ aright,
He went up—over against this site)
Soaring in that deep heaven serene,
To me ’twould but in beauty rise;
Nor hair-clad John would now surprise—
But Volney!”
“Volney?” Derwent cried;
“Ah, yes; he came to Jordan’s side
A pilgrim deist from the Seine.”
“Ay, and Chateaubriand, he too,
The Catholic pilgrim, hither drew—
Here formed his purpose to assert
Religion in her just desert
Against the Red Caps of his time.
The book he wrote; it dies away;
But those Septemberists of crime
Enlarge in Vitriolists to-day.
Nor while we dwell upon this scene
Can one forget poor Lamartine—
A latter palmer. Oh, believe
When, his fine social dream to grieve,
Strode Fate, that realist how grim,
Displacing, deriding, hushing him,
Apt comment then might memory weave
In lesson from this waste.—That cry!
And would the jackal testify
From Moab?”
Derwent could but sway:
“Omit ye in citation, pray,
The healthy pilgrims of times old?
Robust they were; and cheery saw
Shrines, chapels, castles without flaw
Now gone. That river convent’s fold,
By willows nigh the Pilgrims’ Strand
Of Jordan, was a famous hold.
Prince Sigurd from the Norseman land,
Quitting his keel at Joppa, crossed
Hither, with Baldwin for his host,
And Templars for a guard. Perchance
Under these walls the train might prance
By Norman warder eyed.”
“Maybe,”
Responded Vine; “but why disown
The Knight of the Leopard—even he,
Since hereabout that fount made moan,
Named Diamond of the Desert?”—“Yes,”
Beamed Rolfe, divining him in clue;
“Such shadows we, one need confess
That Scott’s dreamed knight seems all but true
Herman Melville- Complete Poems Page 33