Herman Melville- Complete Poems

by Herman Melville

  His broad and blessed comity.

  I do avow He still doth seem

  Pontiff of optimists supreme!”

  The Swede sat stone-like. Suddenly:

  “Leave thy carmine! From thorns the streak

  Ruddies enough that tortured cheek.

  ’Twas Shaftesbury first assumed your tone,

  Trying to cheerfulize Christ’s moan.”

  “Nay now,” plead Derwent, earnest here,

  And in his eyes the forming tear;

  “But hear me, hear!”

  “No more of it!”

  And rose. It was his passion-fit.

  The other changed; his pleasant cheer,

  Confronted by that aspect wild,

  Dropped like the flower from Ceres’ child

  In Enna, seeing the pale brow

  Of Pluto dank from scud below.

  Though by Gethsemane, where first

  Derwent encountered Mortmain’s mien,

  Christian forbearance well he nursed,

  Allowing for distempered spleen;

  Now all was altered, quite reversed—

  ’Twas now as at the burial scene

  By Siddim’s marge. And yet—and yet

  Was here a proof that priest had met

  His confutation? Hardly so

  (Mused Clarel) but he longed to know

  How it could be, that while the rest

  Contented scarce the splenetic Swede,

  They hardly so provoked the man

  To biting outburst unrepressed

  As did the cleric’s gentle fan.

  But had the student paid more heed

  To Derwent’s look, he might have caught

  Hints of reserves within the thought.

  Nor failed the priest ere all too late

  His patience here to vindicate.

  7. BELL AND CAIRN

  “ELOI LAMA SABACHTHANI!”

  And, swooning, strove no more.

  Nor gone

  For every heart, whate’er they say,

  The eclipse that cry of cries brought down,

  And clamors through the darkness blown.

  More wide for some it spreads in sway,

  Involves the lily of the Easter Day.

  A chance word of the Swede in place—

  Allusion to the anguished face,

  Recalled to Clarel now the cry,

  The ghost’s reproachful litany.

  Disturbed then, he apart would go;

  And passed among the crags; and there,

  Like David in Adullam’s lair—

  Could it be Vine, and quivering so?

  ’Twas Vine. He wore that nameless look

  About the mouth—so hard to brook—

  Which in the Cenci portrait shows,

  Lost in each copy, oil or print;

  Lost, or else slurred, as ’twere a hint

  Which if received, few might sustain:

  A trembling over of small throes

  In weak swoll’n lips, which to restrain

  Desire is none, nor any rein.

  Clarel recalled the garden’s shade,

  And Vine therein, with all that made

  The estrangement in Gethsemane.

  Reserves laid bare? and can it be?

  The dock-yard forge’s silent mound,

  Played over by small nimble flame—

  Raked open, lo, the anchor’s found

  In white-heat’s alb.

  With shrinking frame,

  Grateful that he was unespied,

  Clarel quite noiseless slipped aside:

  Ill hour (thought he), an evil sign:

  No more need dream of winning Vine

  Or coming at his mystery.

  O, lives which languish in the shade,

  Puzzle and tease us, or upbraid;

  What noteless confidant, may be,

  Withholds the talisman, the key!

  Or if indeed it run not so,

  And he’s above me where I cling;

  Then how these higher natures know

  Except in shadow from the wing?—

  Hark! as in benison to all,

  Borne on waste air in wasteful clime,

  What swell on swell of mellowing chime,

  Which every drooping pilgrim rallies;

  How much unlike that ominous call

  Pealed in the blast from Roncesvalles!

  Was more than silver in this shell

  By distance toned. What festival?

  What feast? of Adam’s kind, or fay?

  Hark—no, not yet it dies away.

  Where the sexton of the vaulted seas

  Buries the drowned in weedy grave,

  While tolls the buoy-bell down the breeze;

  There, off the shoals of rainy wave

  Outside the channel which they crave,

  The sailors lost in shrouding mist,

  Unto that muffled knelling list,

  The more because for fogged remove

  The floating belfry none may prove;

  So, yet with difference, do these

  Attend.

  “Chimes, chimes? but whence? thou breeze;”

  Here Derwent; “convent none is near.”

  “Ay,” said the Druze, “but quick’s the ear

  In deep hush of the desert wide.”

  “’Tis Saba calling; yea,” Rolfe cried,

  “Saba, Mar Saba summons us:

  O, hither, pilgrims, turn to me,

  Escape the desert perilous;

  Here’s refuge, hither unto me!”

  A lateral lodgment won, they wheeled,

  And toward the abandoned ledge they glanced:

  Near, in the high void waste advanced,

  They saw, in turn abrupt revealed,

  An object reared aloof by Vine

  In whim of silence, when debate

  Was held upon the cliff but late

  And ended where all words decline:

  A heap of stones in arid state.

  The cairn (thought Clarel), meant he—yes,

  A monument to barrenness?

  8. TENTS OF KEDAR

  They climb. In Indian file they gain

  A sheeted blank white lifted plain—

  A moor of chalk, or slimy clay,

  With gluey track and streaky trail

  Of some small slug or torpid snail.

  With hooded brows against the sun,

  Man after man they labor on.

  Corrupt and mortally intense,

  What fumes ere long pollute the sense?

  But, hark the flap and lumbering rise

  Of launching wing; see the gaunt size

  Of the ground-shadow thereby thrown.

  Behind a great and sheltering stone

  A camel, worn out, down had laid—

  Never to rise. ’Tis thence the kite

  Ascends, sails off in Tyreward flight.

  As ’twere Apollyon, angel bad,

  They watch him as he speeds away.

  But Vine, in mere caprice of clay,

  Or else because a pride had birth

  Slighting high claims which vaunted be

  And favoring things of low degree—

  From heaven he turned him down to earth,

  Eagle to ass. She now, ahead

  Went riderless, with even tread

  And in official manner, sooth,

  For bell and cord she’d known in youth;

  Through mart and wild, bazaar and waste

  Precedi
ng camels strung in train,

  Full often had the dwarf thing paced,

  Conductress of the caravan

  Of creatures tall. What meant Vine’s glance

  Ironic here which impish ran

  In thievish way? O, world’s advance:

  We wise limp after!

  The cavalcade

  Anon file by a pit-like glade

  Clean scooped of last lean dregs of soil;

  Attesting in rude terraced stones

  The ancient husbandmen’s hard toil,—

  All now a valley of dry bones—

  In shape a hopper. ’Twas a sight

  So marked with dead, dead undelight,

  That Derwent half unconscious here

  Stole a quick glance at Mortmain’s face

  To note how it received the cheer.

  Whereat the moody man, with sting

  Returned the imprudent glance apace—

  Wayward retort all withering

  Though wordless. Clarel looking on,

  Saw there repeated the wild tone

  Of that discountenancing late

  In sequel to prolonged debate

  Upon the mountain. And again

  Puzzled, and earnest, less to know

  What rasped the Swede in such a man

  Than how indeed the priest could show

  Such strange forbearance; ventured now

  To put a question to him fair.

  “Oh, oh,” he answered, all his air

  Recovered from the disarray;

  “The shadow flung by Ebal’s hill

  On Gerizim, it cannot stay,

  But passes. Ay, and ever still—

  But don’t you see the man is mad?

  His fits he has; sad, sad, how sad!

  Besides; but let me tell you now;

  Do you read Greek? Well, long ago,

  In stage when goslings try the wing,

  And peacock-chicks would softly sing,

  And roosters small essay to crow;

  Reading Theocritus divine,

  Envious I grew of all that charm

  Where sweet and simple so entwine;

  But I plucked up and won a balm:

  Thought I, I’ll beat him in his place:

  If, in my verses, and what not,

  If I can’t have this pagan grace,

  Still—nor alone in page I blot,

  But all encounters that may be—

  I’ll make it up with Christian charity.”

  Another brink they win, and view

  Adown in faintly greenish hollow

  An oval camp of sable hue

  Pitched full across the track they follow—

  Twelve tents of shaggy goat’s wool dun.

  “Ah, tents of Kedar may these be,”

  Cried Derwent; “named by Solomon

  In song? Black, but scarce comely, see.

  Whom have we here? The brood of Lot?”

  “The oval seems his burial-plot,”

  Said Rolfe; “and, for his brood, these men—

  They rove perchance from Moab’s den

  Or Ammon’s. Belex here seems well

  To know them, and no doubt will tell.”

  The Spahi, not at all remiss

  In airing his Turk prejudice,

  Exclaimed: “Ay, sirs; and ill betide

  These Moabites and Ammonites

  Ferrying Jordan either side—

  Robbers and starvelings, mangy wights.

  Sirs, I will vouch one thing they do:

  Each year they harry Jericho

  In harvest; yet thereby they gain

  But meager, rusty spears of grain.

  What right have such black thieves to live?

  Much more to think here to receive

  Our toll? Just Allah! say the word,

  And——” here he signified with sword

  The rest, impatient of delay

  While yet on hight at brink they stay,

  So bidden by Djalea, who slow

  Descends into the hopper low,

  Riding. “To parley with the knaves!”

  Cried Belex; “spur them down; that saves

  All trouble, sirs; ’twas Ibrahim’s way;

  When, in the Lebanon one day

  We came upon a——”

  “Pardon me,”

  The priest; “but look how leisurely

  He enters; yes, and straight he goes

  To meet our friend with scowling brows,

  The warder in yon outlet, see,

  Holding his desert spear transverse,

  Bar-like, from sable hearse to hearse

  Of toll-gate tents. Foreboding ill,

  The woman calls there to her brood.

  But what’s to fear! Ah, with good-will

  They bustle in the war-like mood;

  Save us from those long fish-pole lances!

  Look, menacingly one advances;

  But he, our Druze, he mindeth none,

  But paces. So! they soften down.

  ’Tis Zar, it is that dainty steed,

  High-bred fine equine lady brave,

  Of stock derived from long ago;

  ’Tis she they now admiring heed,

  Picking her mincing way so grave,

  None jostling, grazing scarce a toe

  Of all the press. The sulky clan,

  Yes, make way for the mare—and man!

  There’s homage!”

  “Ay, ay,” Belex said,

  “They’d like to steal her and retire:

  Her beauty is their heart’s desire—

  Base jackals with their jades!”

  Well sped

  The Druze. The champion he nears

  Posted in outlet, keeping ward,

  Who, altering at that aspect, peers,

  And him needs own for natural lord.

  Though claiming kingship of the land

  He hesitates to make demand:

  Salute he yields. The Druze returns

  The salutation; nor he spurns

  To smoke with Ammon, but in way

  Not derogating—brief delay.

  They part. The unmolested train

  Are beckoned, and come down. Amain

  The camp they enter and pass through;

  No conflict here, no weak ado

  Of words or blows.

  This policy

  (Djalea’s) bred now a pleasing thought

  In Derwent: “Wars might ended be,

  Yes, Japhet, Shem, and Ham be brought

  To confluence of amity,

  Were leaders but discreet and wise

  Like this our chief.”

  The armed man’s eyes

  Turned toward him tolerantly there

  As ’twere a prattling child.

  They fare

  Further, and win a nook of stone,

  And there a fountain making moan.

  The shade invites, though not of trees:

  They tarry in this chapel-of-ease;

  Then up, and journey on and on,

  Nor tent they see—not even a lonely one.

  9. OF MONASTERIES

  The lake ink-black mid slopes of snow—

  The dead-house for the frozen, barred—

  And the stone hospice; chill they show

  Monastic in thy pass, Bernard.

  Apostle of the Alps storm-riven,

  How lone didst build so near the heaven!

  Anchored in seas of Nitria’s sand,

  The desert convent of the Copt—

&n
bsp; No aerolite can more command

  The sense of dead detachment, dropped

  All solitary from the sky.

  The herdsmen of Olympus lie

  In summer when the eve is won

  Viewing white Spermos lower down,

  The mountain-convent; and winds bear

  The chimes that bid the monks to prayer;

  Nor man-of-war-hawk sole in sky

  O’er lonely ship sends lonelier cry.

  The Grand Chartreuse with crystal peaks

  Mid pines—the wintry Paradise

  Of soul which but a Saviour seeks—

  The mountains round all slabbed with ice;

  May well recall the founder true,

  St. Bruno, who to heaven has gone

  And proved his motto—that whereto

  Each locked Carthusian yet adheres:

  Troubled I was, but spake I none;

  I kept in mind the eternal years.

  And Vallambrosa—in, shut in;

  And Montserrat—enisled aloft;

  With many more the verse might win,

  Solitudes all, austere or soft.

  But Saba! Of retreats where heart

  Longing for more than downy rest,

  Fit place would find from world apart,

  Saba abides the loneliest:

  Saba, that with an eagle’s theft

  Seizeth and dwelleth in the cleft.

  Aloof the monks their aerie keep,

  Down from their hanging cells they peep

  Like samphire-gatherers o’er the bay

  Faint hearing there the hammering deep

  Of surf that smites the ledges gray.

  But up and down, from grot to shrine,

  Along the gorge, hard by the brink

  File the gowned monks in even line,

  And never shrink!

  With litany or dirge they wend

  Where nature as in travail dwells;

  And the worn grots and pensive dells

  In wail for wail responses send—

  Echoes in plaintive syllables.

  With mystic silvery brede divine,

  Saint Basil’s banner of Our Lord

  (In lieu of crucifix adored

  By Greeks which images decline)

  Stained with the five small wounds and red,

  Down through the darkling gulf is led—

  By night ofttimes, while tapers glow

  Small in the depths, as stars may show

  Reflected far in well profound.

  Full fifteen hundred years have wound

  Since cenobite first harbored here;

  The bones of men, deemed martyrs crowned,