The crumblings note they of the verge.
In rear one strange steed timid lags:
On foot an Arab goes before
And coaxes him to steepy shore
Of scooped-out gulfs, would halt him there:
Back shrinks the foal with snort and glare.
Then downward from the giddy brim
They peep; but hardly may they tell
If the black gulf affrighted him
Or lingering scent he caught in air
From relics in mid lodgment placed,
Now first perceived within the dell—
Two human skeletons inlaced
In grapple as alive they fell,
Or so disposed in overthrow,
As to suggest encounter so.
A ticklish rim, an imminent pass
For quarrel; and blood-feud, alas,
The Arab keeps, and where or when,
Cain meeting Abel, closes then.
That desert’s age the gorge may prove,
Piercing profound the mountain bare;
Yet hardly churned out in the groove
By a perennial wear and tear
Of floods; nay, dry it shows within;
But twice a year the waters flow,
Nor then in tide, but dribbling thin:
Avers Mar Saba’s abbot so.
Nor less perchance before the day
When Joshua met the tribes in fray,
What wave here ran through leafy scene
Like uplands in Vermont the green;
What sylvan folk by mountain-base
Descrying showers about the crown
Of woods, foreknew the freshet’s race
Quick to descend in torrent down;
And watched for it, and hailed in glee,
Then rode the comb of freshet wild,
As peaked upon the roller free
With gulls for mates, the Maldives’ merry child?
Or, earlier yet, could be a day,
In time’s first youth and pristine May
When here the hunter stood alone—
Moccasined Nimrod, belted Boone;
And down the tube of fringed ravine
Siddim descried, a lilied scene?
But crime and earthquake, throes and war;
And heaven remands the flower and star.
Aside they turn, and leave that gorge,
And slant upon the mountain long,
And toward a ledge they toilsome urge
High over Siddim, and overhung
By loftier crags. In spirals curled
And pearly nothings buoyant whirled,
Eddies of exhalations light,
As over lime-kilns, swim in sight.
The fog dispersed, those vapors show
Diurnal from the waters won
By the athirst demanding sun—
Recalling text of Scripture so;
For on the morn which followed rain
Of fire, when Abraham looked again,
The smoke went up from all the plain.
Their mount of vision, voiceless, bare,
It is that ridge, the desert’s own,
Which by its dead Medusa stare,
Petrific o’er the valley thrown,
Congeals Arabia into stone.
With dull metallic glint, the sea
Slumbers beneath the silent lee
Of sulphurous hills. These stretch away
Toward wilds of Kadesh Barnea,
And Zin the waste.
In pale regard
Intent the Swede turned thitherward:
“God came from Teman; in His hour
The Holy One from Paran came;
They knew Him not; He hid His power
Within the forking of the flame,
Within the thunder and the roll.
Imperious in its swift control,
The lion’s instantaneous lick
Not more effaces to the quick
Than His fierce indignation then.
Look! for His wake is here. O men,
Since Science can so much explode,
Evaporated is this God?—
Recall the red year Forty-eight:
He storms in Paris; thence divides;
The menace scarce outspeeds the fate:
He’s over the Rhine—He’s at Berlin—
At Munich—Dresden—fires Vien;
He’s over the Alps—the whirlwind rides
In Rome; London’s alert—the Czar:
The portent and the fact of war,
And terror that into hate subsides.
There, through His instruments made known,
Including Atheist and his tribes,
Behold the prophet’s marching One,
He at whose coming Midian shook—
The God, the striding God of Habakkuk.”
Distempered! Nor might passion tire,
Nor pale reaction from it quell
The craze of grief’s intolerant fire
Unwearied and unweariable.
2. THE CARPENTER
From vehemence too mad to stem
Fain would they turn and solace them.
Turn where they may they find a dart.
For while recumbent here they view,
Beneath them spread, the seats malign,
Nehemiah recurs—in last recline
A hermit there. And some renew
Their wonderment at such a heart,
Single in life—in death, how far apart!
That life they question, seek a clew:
Those virtues which his meekness knew,
Marked these indeed but wreckful wane
Of strength, or the organic man?
The hardy hemlock, if subdued,
Decays to violets in the wood,
Which put forth from the sodden stem:
His virtues, might they breed like them?
Nor less that tale by Rolfe narrated
(Thrown out some theory to achieve),
Erewhile upon Mount Olivet,
That sea-tale of the master fated;
Not wholly might it here receive
An application such as met
The case. It needed something more
Or else, to penetrate the core.
But Clarel—made remindful so
Of by-gone things which death can show
In kindled meaning—here revealed
That once Nehemiah his lips unsealed
(How prompted he could not recall)
In story which seemed rambling all,
And yet, in him, not quite amiss.
In pointed version it was this:
A gentle wight of Jesu’s trade,
A carpenter, for years had made
His living in a quiet dell,
And toiled and ate and slept alone,
Esteemed a harmless witless one.
Had I a friend thought he, ’twere well.
A friend he made, and through device
Of jobbing for him without price.
But on a day there came a word—
A word unblest, a blow abhorred.
Thereafter, in the mid of night,
When from the rafter and the joist
The insect ticked; and he, lone sprite,
How wakeful lay, what word was voiced?
Me love; fear only man. And he—
He willed what seemed too strange to be:
The hamlet marveled and the glade:
Interring him within his house,
He there his monaste
ry made,
And grew familiar with the mouse.
Down to the beggar who might sing,
Alms, silent alms, unseen he’d fling,
And cakes to children. But no more
Abroad he went, till spent and gray,
Feet foremost he was borne away.
As when upon a misty shore
The watchful seaman marks a light
Blurred by the fog, uncertain quite;
And thereto instant turns the glass
And studies it, and thinks it o’er
By compass: Is’t the cape we pass?
So Rolfe from Clarel’s mention caught
Food for an eagerness of thought:
“It bears, it bears; such things may be:
Shut from the busy world’s pell-mell
And man’s aggressive energy—
In cloistral Palestine to dwell
And pace the stone!”
And Mortmain heard,
Attesting; more his look did tell
Than comment of a bitter word.
Meantime the ass, high o’er the bed
Late scooped by Siddim’s borders there—
As stupefied by brute despair,
Motionless hung the earthward head.
3. OF THE MANY MANSIONS
“The Elysium of the Greek was given
By haughty bards, a hero-heaven;
No victim looked for solace there:
The marble gate disowned the plea—
Ye heavy laden, come to me.
Nor Fortune’s Isles, nor Tempe’s dale
Nor Araby the Blest did bear
A saving balm—might not avail
To lull one pang, one lot repair.
Dreams, narrow dreams; nor of a kind
Showing inventiveness of mind
Beyond our earth. But oh! ’twas rare,
In world like this, the world we know
(Sole know, and reason from) to dare
To pledge indemnifying good
In worlds not known; boldly avow,
Against experience, the brood
Of Christian hopes.”
So Rolfe, and sat
Clouded. But, changing, up he gat:
“Whence sprang the vision? They who freeze,
On earth here, under want or wrong;
The Sermon on the Mount shall these
Find verified? is love so strong?
Or bounds are hers, that Python mars
Your gentler influence, ye stars?
If so, how seem they given o’er
To worse than Circe’s fooling spell;
Enslaved, degraded, tractable
To each mean atheist’s crafty power.
So winning in enthusiast plea,
Here may the Gospel but the more
Operate like a perfidy?”
“So worldlings deem,” the Swede in glow;
“Much so they deem; or, if not so,
Hereon they act. But what said he,
The Jew whose feet the blisters know,
To Christ as sore He trailed the Tree
Toward Golgotha: ‘Ha, is it Thou,
The king, the god? Well then, be strong:
No royal steed with galls is wrung:
That’s for the hack.’ There he but hurled
The scoff of Nature and the World,
Those monstrous twins.” It jarred the nerve
Of Derwent, but he masked the thrill.
For Vine, he kindled, sitting still;
Respected he the Swede’s wild will
As did the Swede Vine’s ruled reserve.
Mortmain went on: “We’ve touched a theme
From which the club and lyceum swerve,
Nor Herr von Goethe would esteem;
And yet of such compulsive worth,
It dragged a god here down to earth,
As some account. And, truth to say,
Religion ofttimes, one may deem,
Is man’s appeal from fellow-clay:
Thibetan faith implies the extreme—
That death emancipates the good,
Absorbs them into deity,
Dropping the wicked into bestialhood.”
With that for text to revery due,
In lifted waste, on ashy ground
Like Job’s pale group, without a sound
They sat. But hark! what strains ensue
Voiced from the crags above their view?
4. THE CYPRIOTE
“Noble gods at the board
Where lord unto lord
Light pushes the care-killing wine:
Urbane in their pleasure,
Superb in their leisure—
Lax ease—
Lax ease after labor divine!
“Golden ages eternal,
Autumnal, supernal,
Deep mellow their temper serene:
The rose by their gate
Shall it yield unto fate?
They are gods—
They are gods and their garlands keep green.
“Ever blandly adore them;
But spare to implore them:
They rest, they discharge them from time;
Yet believe, light believe
They would succor, reprieve—
Nay, retrieve—
Might but revelers pause in the prime!”
“Who sings?” cried Rolfe; “dare say no Quaker:
Fine song o’er funeral Siddim here:
So, mindless of the undertaker,
In cage above her mistress’ bier
The gold canary chirps. What cheer?
Who comes?”
“Ay, welcome as the drums
Of marching allies unto men
Beleaguered—comes, who hymning comes—
What rescuer, what Delian?”
So Derwent, and with quick remove
Scaling the rock which hemmed their cove
He thence descried where higher yet
A traveler came, by cliffs beset,
Descending, and where terrors met.
Nor Orpheus of heavenly seed
Adown thrilled Hades’ gorges singing,
About him personally flinging
The bloom transmitted from the mead;
In listening ghost such thoughts could breed
As did the vocal stranger here
In Mortmain, where relaxed he lay
Under that voice from other sphere
And carol laughing at the clay.
Nearer the minstrel drew. How fair
And light he leaned with easeful air
Backward in saddle, so to frame
A counterpoise as down he came.
Against the dolorous mountain side
His Phrygian cap in scarlet pride
Burned like a cardinal-flower in glen.
And after him, in trappings paced
His escort armed, three goodly men.
Observing now the other train,
He halted. Young he was, and graced
With fortunate aspect, such as draws
Hearts to good-will by natural laws.
No furtive scrutiny he made,
But frankly flung salute, and said:
“Well met in desert! Hear my song?”
“Indeed we did,” cried Derwent boon.
“And wondered where you got that tune,”
Rolfe added there. “Oh, brought along
From Cyprus; I’m a Cypriote,
You see; one catches many a note
>
Wafted from only heaven knows where.”
“And, pray, how name you it?” “The air?
Why, hymn of Aristippus.” “Ah:
And whither wends your train?” “Not far;”
And sidelong in the saddle free
A thigh he lolled: “’Tis thus, you see:
My dame beneath Our Lady’s star
Vowed in her need, to Saba’s shrine
Three flagons good for holy wine:
Vowed, and through me performed. Even now
I come from Saba, having done
Her will, accomplishing the vow.
But late I made a private one—
Meant to surprise her with a present
She’ll value more than juicy pheasant,
Good mother mine. Yes, here I go
To Jordan, in desert there below,
To dip this shroud for her.” “Shroud, shroud?”
Cried Derwent, following the hand
In startled wonderment unfeigned,
Which here a little tap bestowed
In designation on a roll
Strapped to the pommel; “Azrael’s scroll!
You do not mean you carry there
A—a—” “The same; ’tis woven fair:
“My shroud is saintly linen,
In lavender ’tis laid;
I have chosen a bed by the marigold
And supplied me a silver spade!”
The priest gazed at the singer; then
Turned his perplexed entreating ken
Upon Djalea. But Rolfe explained:
“I chance to know. Last year I gained
The Jordan at the Easter tide,
And saw the Greeks in numbers there,
Men, women, blithe on every side,
Dipping their winding-sheets. With care
They bleach and fold and put away
And take home to await the day:
A custom of old precedent,
And curious too in mode ’tis kept,
Showing how under Christian sway
Greeks still retain their primal bent,
Nor let grave doctrine intercept
That gay Hellene lightheartedness
Which in the pagan years did twine
The funeral urn with fair caress
Of vintage holiday divine.”
He turned him toward the Cypriote:
“Your courier, the forerunning note
Which ere we sighted you, we heard—
You’re bold to trill it so, my bird.”
“And why? It is a fluent song.
Though who they be I cannot say,
I trust their lordships think no wrong;
Herman Melville- Complete Poems Page 42