Parasite-bugs—black swarming ones.”
“The monks?”—“You jest: thinned out, those drones.”
Considerate uncommitted eyes
Charged with things manifold and wise,
Rolfe turned upon good Derwent here;
Then changed: “Fall back we must. Yon mule
With pannier: Come, in stream we’ll cool
The wine ere quaffing.—Muleteer!”
27. VINE AND CLAREL
While now, to serve the pilgrim train,
The Arabs willow branches hew,
(For palms they serve in dearth of true),
Or, kneeling by the margin, stoop
To brim memorial bottles up;
And the Greek’s wine entices two:
Apart see Clarel here incline,
Perplexed by that Dominican,
Nor less by Rolfe—capricious man:
“I cannot penetrate him.—Vine?”
As were Venetian slats between,
He espied him through a leafy screen,
Luxurious there in umbrage thrown,
Light sprays above his temples blown–
The river through the green retreat
Hurrying, reveling by his feet.
Vine looked an overture, but said
Nothing, till Clarel leaned—half laid—
Beside him: then “We dream, or be
In sylvan John’s baptistery:
May Pisa’s equal beauty keep?—
But how bad habits persevere!
I have been moralizing here
Like any imbecile: as thus:
Look how these willows over-weep
The waves, and plain: ‘Fleet so from us?
And wherefore? whitherward away?
Your best is here where wildings sway
And the light shadow’s blown about;
Ah, tarry, for at hand’s a sea
Whence ye shall never issue out
Once in.’ They sing back: ‘So let be!
We mad-caps hymn it as we flow—
Short life and merry! be it so!’ ”
Surprised at such a fluent turn,
The student did but listen—learn.
Putting aside the twigs which screened,
Again Vine spake, and lightly leaned
“Look; in yon vault so leafy dark,
At deep end lit by gemmy spark
Of mellowed sunbeam in a snare;
Over the stream—ay, just through there—
The sheik on that celestial mare
Shot, fading.—Clan of outcast Hagar,
Well do ye come by spear and dagger!
Yet in your bearing ye outvie
Our western Red Men, chiefs that stalk
In mud paint—whirl the tomahawk.—
But in these Nimrods noted you
The natural language of the eye,
Burning or liquid, flame or dew,
As still the changeable quick mood
Made transit in the wayward blood?
Methought therein one might espy,
For all the wildness, thoughts refined
By the old Asia’s dreamful mind;
But hark—a bird?”
Pure as the rain
Which diamondeth with lucid grain,
The white swan in the April hours
Floating between two sunny showers
Upon the lake, while buds unroll;
So pure, so virginal in shrine
Of true unworldliness looked Vine.
Ah, clear sweet ether of the soul
(Mused Clarel), holding him in view.
Prior advances unreturned
Not here he recked of, while he yearned—
O, now but for communion true
And close; let go each alien theme;
Give me thyself!
But Vine, at will
Dwelling upon his wayward dream,
Nor as suspecting Clarel’s thrill
Of personal longing, rambled still;
“Methinks they show a lingering trace
Of some quite unrecorded race
Such as the Book of Job implies.
What ages of refinings wise
Must have forerun what there is writ—
More ages than have followed it.
At Lydda late, as chance would have,
Some tribesmen from the south I saw,
Their tents pitched in the Gothic nave,
The ruined one. Disowning law,
Not lawless lived they; no, indeed;
Their chief—why, one of Sydney’s clan,
A slayer, but chivalric man;
And chivalry, with all that breed
Was Arabic or Saracen
In source, they tell. But, as men stray
Further from Ararat away
Pity it were did they recede
In carriage, manners, and the rest;
But no, for ours the palm indeed
In bland amenities far West!
Come now, for pastime let’s complain;
Grudged thanks, Columbus, for thy main!
Put back, as ’twere—assigned by fate
To fight crude Nature o’er again,
By slow degrees we re-create.
But then, alas, in Arab camps
No lack, they say, no lack of scamps.”
Divided mind knew Clarel here;
The heart’s desire did interfere.
Thought he, How pleasant in another
Such sallies, or in thee, if said
After confidings that should wed
Our souls in one:—Ah, call me brother!—
So feminine his passionate mood
Which, long as hungering unfed,
All else rejected or withstood.
Some inklings he let fall. But no:
Here over Vine there slid a change—
A shadow, such as thin may show
Gliding along the mountain-range
And deepening in the gorge below.
Does Vine’s rebukeful dusking say—
Why, on this vernal bank to-day,
Why bring oblations of thy pain
To one who hath his share? here fain
Would lap him in a chance reprieve?
Lives none can help ye; that believe.
Art thou the first soul tried by doubt?
Shalt prove the last? Go, live it out.
But for thy fonder dream of love
In man toward man—the soul’s caress—
The negatives of flesh should prove
Analogies of non-cordialness
In spirit.—E’en such conceits could cling
To Clarel’s dream of vain surmise
And imputation full of sting.
But, glancing up, unwarned he saw
What serious softness in those eyes
Bent on him. Shyly they withdraw.
Enslaver, wouldst thou but fool me
With bitter-sweet, sly sorcery,
Pride’s pastime? or wouldst thou indeed,
Since things unspoken may impede,
Let flow thy nature but for bar?—
Nay, dizzard, sick these feelings are;
How findest place within thy heart
For such solicitudes apart
From Ruth?—Self-taxings.
But a sign
Came here indicative from Vine,
Who with a reverent hushed air
His view directed toward the glade
Beyond, wherein a niche was made
Of le
afage, and a kneeler there,
The meek one, on whom, as he prayed,
A golden shaft of mellow light,
Oblique through vernal cleft above,
And making his pale forehead bright,
Scintillant fell. By such a beam
From heaven descended erst the dove
On Christ emerging from the stream.
It faded; ’twas a transient ray;
And, quite unconscious of its sheen,
The suppliant rose and moved away,
Not dreaming that he had been seen.
When next they saw that innocent,
From prayer such cordial had he won
That all his aspect of content
As with the oil of gladness shone.
Less aged looked he. And his cheer
Took language in an action here:
The train now mustering in line,
Each pilgrim with a river-palm
In hand (except indeed the Jew),
The saint the head-stall need entwine
With wreathage of the same. When new
They issued from the wood, no charm
The ass found in such idle gear
Superfluous: with her long ear
She flapped it off, and the next thrust
Of hoof imprinted it in dust.
Meek hands (mused Vine), vainly ye twist
Fair garland for the realist.
The Hebrew, noting whither bent
Vine’s glance, a word in passing lent:
“Ho, tell us how it comes to be
That thou who rank’st not with beginners
Regard have for yon chief of sinners.”
“Yon chief of sinners?”
“So names he
Himself. For one I’ll not express
How I do loathe such lowliness.”
28. THE FOG
Southward they file. ’Tis Pluto’s park
Beslimed as after baleful flood:
A nitrous, filmed and pallid mud,
With shrubs to match. Salt specks they mark
Or mildewed stunted twigs unclean
Brushed by the stirrup, Stygean green,
With shrivelled nut or apple small.
The Jew plucked one. Like a fuzz-ball
It brake, discharging fetid dust.
“Pippins of Sodom? they’ve declined!”
Cried Derwent: “where’s the ruddy rind?”
Said Rolfe: “If Circe tempt one thus,
A fig for vice—I’m virtuous.
Who but poor Margoth now would lust
After such fruitage. See, but see
What makes our Nehemiah to be
So strange. That look returns to him
Which late he wore by Achor’s rim.”
Over pale hollows foully smeared
The saint hung with an aspect weird:
“Yea, here it was the kings were tripped,
These, these the slime-pits where they slipped—
Gomorrah’s lord and Sodom’s, lo!”
“What’s that?” asked Derwent.
“You should know,”
Said Rolfe: “your Scripture lore revive:
The four kings strove against the five
In Siddim here.”
“Ah,—Genesis.
But turn; upon this other hand
See here another not remiss.”
’Twas Margoth raking there the land.
Some minerals of noisome kind
He found and straight to pouch consigned.
“The chiffonier!” cried Rolfe; “e’en grim
Milcom and Chemosh scowl at him—
Here nosing underneath their lee
Of pagod hights.”
In deeper dale
What canker may their palms assail?
Spotted they show, all limp they be.
Is it thy bitter mist, Bad Sea,
That, sudden driving, northward comes
Involving them, that each man roams
Half seen or lost?
But in the dark
Thick scud, the chanting saint they hark:
“Though through the valley of the shade
I pass, no evil do I fear;
His candle shineth on my head:
Lo, he is with me, even here.”
The rack drove by: and Derwent said—
“How apt he is!” then pause he made:
“This palm has grown a sorry sight;
A palm ’tis not, if named aright:
I’ll drop it.—Look, the lake ahead!”
29. BY THE MARGE
The legend round a Grecian urn,
The sylvan legend, though decay
Have wormed the garland all away,
And fire have left its Vandal burn;
Yet beauty inextinct may charm
In outline of the vessel’s form.
Much so with Sodom, shore and sea.
Fair Como would like Sodom be
Should horror overrun the scene
And calcine all that makes it green,
Yet haply sparing to impeach
The contour in its larger reach.
In graceful lines the hills advance,
The valley’s sweep repays the glance,
And wavy curves of winding beach;
But all is charred or crunched or riven,
Scarce seems of earth whereon we dwell;
Though framed within the lines of heaven
The picture intimates a hell.
That marge they win. Bides Mortmain there?
No trace of man, not anywhere.
It was the salt wave’s northern brink.
No gravel bright nor shell was seen,
Nor kelpy growth nor coralline,
But dead boughs stranded, which the rout
Of Jordan, in old freshets born
In Libanus, had madly torn
Green from her arbor and thrust out
Into the liquid waste. No sound
Nor motion but of sea. The land
Was null: nor bramble, weed, nor trees,
Nor anything that grows on ground,
Flexile to indicate the breeze;
Though hitherward by south winds fanned
From Usdum’s brink and Bozrah’s site
Of bale, flew gritty atoms light.
Toward Karek’s castle lost in blur,
And thence beyond toward Aroer
By Arnon where the robbers keep,
Jackal and vulture, eastward sweep
The waters, while their western rim
Stretches by Judah’s headlands grim,
Which make in turns a sea-wall steep.
There, by the cliffs or distance hid,
The Fount or Cascade of the Kid
An Eden makes of one high glen,
One vernal and contrasted scene
In jaws of gloomy crags uncouth—
Rosemary in the black boar’s mouth.
Alike withheld from present view
(And, until late, but hawk and kite
Visited the forgotten site),
The Maccabees’ Masada true;
Stronghold which Flavian arms did rend,
The Peak of Eleazer’s end,
Where patriot warriors made with brides
A martyrdom of suicides.
There too did Mariamne’s hate
The death of John accelerate.
A crag of fairest, foulest weather—
Famous, and infamous together.
Hereof they spake, but never Vine,
Who little knew or seemed to know
Derived from books, but did incline
In docile way to each one’s flow
Of knowledge bearing anyhow
In points less noted.
Southernmost
The sea indefinite was lost
Under a catafalque of cloud.
Unwelcome impress to disown
Or light evade, the priest, aloud
Taking an interested tone
And brisk, “Why, yonder lies Mount Hor,
E’en thereaway—that southward shore.”
“Ay,” added Rolfe, “and Aaron’s cell
Thereon. A mountain sentinel,
He holds in solitude austere
The outpost of prohibited Seir
In cut-off Edom.”
“God can sever!”
Brake in the saint, who nigh them stood;
“The satyr to the dragon’s brood
Crieth! God’s word abideth ever:
None there pass through—no, never, never!”
“My friend Max Levi, he passed through.”
They turned. It was the hardy Jew.
Absorbed in vision here, the saint
Heard not. The priest in flushed constraint
Showed mixed emotion; part he winced
And part a humor pleased evinced—
Relish that would from qualms be free—
Aversion involved with sympathy.
But changing, and in formal way—
“Admitted; nay, ’tis tritely true;
Men pass thro’ Edom, through and through.
But surely, few so dull to-day
As not to make allowance meet
For Orientalism’s display
In Scripture, where the chapters treat
Of mystic themes.”
With eye askance,
The apostate fixed no genial glance:
“Ay, Keith’s grown obsolete. And, pray,
How long will these last glosses stay?
The agitating influence
Of knowledge never will dispense
With teasing faith, do what ye may.
Adjust and readjust, ye deal
With compass in a ship of steel.”
“Such perturbations do but give
Proof that faith’s vital: sensitive
Is faith, my friend.”
“Go to, go to:
Your black bat! how she hangs askew,
Torpid, from wall by claws of wings:
Let drop the left—sticks fast the right;
Then this unhook—the other swings;
Leave—she regains her double plight.”
“Ah, look,” cried Derwent; “ah, behold!”
Herman Melville- Complete Poems Page 38