Pushed deeper, so as e’en to get
Closer in comradeship at ease.
Arnaut and Spahi, in respect
Of all adventures they had known,
These chiefly did the priest affect:
Adventures, such as duly shown
Printed in books, seem passing strange
To clerks which read them by the fire,
Yet be the wonted common-place
Of some who in the Orient range,
Free-lances, spendthrifts of their hire,
And who in end, when they retrace
Their lives, see little to admire
Or wonder at, so dull they be
(Like fish mid marvels of the sea)
To every thing that is not pent
In self, or thereto ministrant.
12. THE TIMONEER’S STORY
But ere those Sinbads had begun
Their Orient Decameron,
Rolfe rose, to view the further hall.
Here showed, set up against the wall,
Heroic traditionary arms,
Protecting tutelary charms
(Like Godfrey’s sword and Baldwin’s spur
In treasury of the Sepulcher,
Wherewith they knighthood yet confer,
The monks or their Superior)
Sanctified heirlooms of old time;
With trophies of the Paynim clime;
These last with tarnish on the gilt,
And jewels vanished from the hilt.
Upon one serpent-curving blade
Love-motto beamed from Antar’s rhyme
In Arabic. A second said
(A scimiter the Turk had made,
And likely, it had clove a skull)
IN NAME OF GOD THE MERCIFUL!
A third was given suspended place,
And as in salutation waved,
And in old Greek was finely graved
With this: HAIL, MARY, FULL OF GRACE!
’Tis a rare sheaf of arms be here,
Thought Rolfe: “Who’s this?” and turned to peer
At one who had but late come in,
(A stranger) and, avoiding din
Made by each distant reveler,
Anchored beside him. His sea-gear
Announced a pilgrim-timoneer.
The weird and weather-beaten face,
Bearded and pitted, and fine vexed
With wrinkles of cabala text,
Did yet reveal a twinge-like trace
Of some late trial undergone:
Nor less a beauty grave pertained
To him, part such as is ordained
To Eld, for each age hath its own,
And even scars may share the tone.
Bald was his head as any bell—
Quite bald, except a silvery round
Of small curled bud-like locks which bound
His temples as with asphodel.
Such he, who in nigh nook disturbed
Upon his mat by late uncurbed
Light revel, came with air subdued,
And by the clustered arms here stood
Regarding them with dullish eye
Of some old reminiscence sad.
On him Rolfe gazed: “And do ye sigh?
Hardly they seem to cheer ye: why?”
He pursed the mouth and shook the head.
“But speak!” “’Tis but an old bewailing.”
“No matter, tell.” “’Twere unavailing.”
“Come, now.”
“Since you entreat of me—
’Tis long ago—I’m aged, see:
From Egypt sailing—hurrying too—
For spite the sky there, always blue,
And blue daubed seas so bland, the pest
Was breaking out—the people quailing
In houses hushed; from Egypt sailing,
In ship, I say, which shunned the pest,
Cargo half-stored, and—and—alack!
One passenger of visage black,
But whom a white robe did invest
And linen turban, like the rest—
A Moor he was, with but a chest;—
A fugitive poor Wahabee—
So ran his story—who by me
Was smuggled aboard; and ah, a crew
That did their wrangles still renew,
Jabbing the poignard in the fray,
And mutinous withal;—I say,
From Egypt bound for Venice sailing—
On Friday—well might heart forebode!
In this same craft from Cadiz hailing,
Christened by friar ‘The Peace of God,’
(She laden now with rusted cannon
Which long beneath the Crescent’s pennon
On beach had laid, condemned and dead,
Beneath a rampart, and from bed
Were shipped off to be sold and smelted
And into new artillery melted)
I say that to The Peace of God
(Your iron the salt seas corrode)
I say there fell to her unblest
A hap more baleful than the pest.
Yea, from the first I knew a fear,
So strangely did the needle veer.
A gale came up, with frequent din
Of cracking thunder out and in:
Corposants on yard-arms did burn,
Red lightning forked upon the stern:
The needle like an imp did spin.
Three gulls continual plied in wake,
Which wriggled like a wounded snake,
For I, the wretched timoneer,
By fitful stars yet tried to steer
’Neath shortened sail. The needle flew
(The glass thick blurred with damp and dew),
And flew the ship we knew not where.
Meantime the mutinous bad crew
Got at the casks and drowned despair,
Carousing, fighting. What to do?
To all the saints I put up prayer,
Seeing against the gloomy shades
Breakers in ghastly palisades.
Nevertheless she took the rocks;
And dinning through the grinds and shocks,
(Attend the solving of the riddle)
I heard the clattering of blades
Shaken within the Moor’s strong box
In cabin underneath the needle.
How screamed those three birds round the mast
Slant going over. The keel was broken
And heaved aboard us for death-token.
To quit the wreck I was the last,
Yet I sole wight that ’scaped the sea.”
“But he, the Moor?”
“O, sorcery!
For him no heaven is, no atoner.
He proved an armorer, the Jonah!
And dealt in blades that poisoned were,
A black lieutenant of Lucifer.
I heard in Algiers, as befell
Afterward, his crimes of hell.
I’m far from superstitious, see;
But arms in sheaf, somehow they trouble me.”
“Ha, trouble, trouble? what’s that, pray?
I’ve heard of it; bad thing, they say;
“Bug there, lady bug, plumped in your wine?
Only rose-leaves flutter by mine!”
The gracioso man, ’twas he,
Flagon in hand, held tiltingly.
How peered at him that timoneer,
With what a changed, still, merman-cheer,
As much he could, but would not say:
So murm
uring naught, he moved away.
“Old, old,” the Lesbian dropped; “old—dry:
Remainder biscuit; and alas,
But recent ’scaped from luckless pass.”
“Indeed? relate.”—“O, by-and-by.”
But Rolfe would have it then. And so
The incident narrated was
Forthwith.
Re-cast, it thus may flow:
The shipmen of the Cyclades
Being Greeks, even of St. Saba’s creed,
Are frequent pilgrims. From the seas
Greek convents welcome them, and feed.
Agath, with hardy messmates ten,
To Saba, and on foot, had fared
From Joppa. Duly in the Glen
His prayers he said; but rashly dared
Afar to range without the wall.
Upon him fell a robber-brood,
Some Ammonites. Choking his call,
They beat and stripped him, drawing blood,
And left him prone. His mates made search
With friars, and ere night found him so,
And bore him moaning back to porch
Of Saba’s refuge. Cure proved slow;
The end his messmates might not wait;
Therefore they left him unto love
And charity—within that gate
Not lacking. Mended now in main,
Or convalescent, he would fain
Back unto Joppa make remove
With the first charitable train.
His story told, the teller turned
And seemed like one who instant yearned
To rid him of intrusive sigh:
“Yon happier pilgrim, by-the-by—
I like him: his vocation, pray?
Purveyor he? like me, purvey?”
“Ay—for the conscience: he’s our priest.”
“Priest? he’s a grape, judicious one—
Keeps on the right side of the sun.
But here’s a song I heard at feast.”
13. SONG AND RECITATIVE
“The chalice tall of beaten gold
Is hung with bells about:
The flamen serves in temple old,
And weirdly are the tinklings rolled
When he pours libation out.
O Cybele, dread Cybele,
Thy turrets nod, thy terrors be!
“But service done, and vestment doffed,
With cronies in a row
Behind night’s violet velvet soft,
The chalice drained he rings aloft
To another tune, I trow.
O Cybele, fine Cybele,
Jolly thy bins and belfries be!”
With action timing well the song,
His flagon flourished up in air,
The varlet of the isle so flung
His mad-cap intimation—there
Comic on Rolfe his eye retaining
In mirth how full of roguish feigning.
Ought I protest? (thought Rolfe) the man
Nor malice has, nor faith: why ban
This heart though of religion scant,
A true child of the lax Levant,
That polyglot and loose-laced mother?
In such variety he’s lived
Where creeds dovetail into each other;
Such influences he’s received:
Thrown among all—Medes, Elamites,
Egyptians, Jews and proselytes,
Strangers from Rome, and men of Crete—
And parts of Lybia round Cyrene—
Arabians, and the throngs ye meet
On Smyrna’s quays, and all between
Stamboul and Fez:—thrown among these,
A caterer to revelries,
He’s caught the tints of many a scene,
And so become a harlequin
Gay patchwork of all levities.
Holding to now, swearing by here,
His course conducting by no keen
Observance of the stellar sphere—
He coasteth under sail latteen:
Then let him laugh, enjoy his dinner,
He’s an excusable poor sinner.
’Twas Rolfe. But Clarel, what thought he?
For he too heard the Lesbian’s song
There by the casement where he hung:
In heart of Saba’s mystery
This mocker light!—
But now in waltz
The Pantaloon here Rolfe assaults;
Then, keeping arm around his waist,
Sees Rolfe’s reciprocally placed;
’Tis side-by-side entwined in ease
Of Chang and Eng the Siamese
When leaning mutually embraced;
And so these improvised twin brothers
Dance forward and salute the others,
The Lesbian flourishing for sign
His wine-cup, though it lacked the wine.
They sit. With random scraps of song
He whips the tandem hours along,
Or moments, rather; in the end
Calling on Derwent to unbend
In lyric.
“I?” said Derwent, “I?
Well, if you like, I’ll even give
A trifle in recitative—
A something—nothing—anything—
Since little does it signify
In festive free contributing:
“To Hafiz in grape-arbor comes
Didymus, with book he thumbs:
My lord Hafiz, priest of bowers—
Flowers in such a world as ours?
Who is the god of all these flowers?—
“Signior Didymus, who knows?
None the less I take repose—
Believe, and worship here with wine
In vaulted chapel of the vine
Before the altar of the rose.
“Ah, who sits here? a sailor meek?”
It was that sea-appareled Greek.
“Gray brother, here, partake our wine.”
He shook his head, yes, did decline.
“Or quaff or sing,” cried Derwent then,
“For learn, we be hilarious men.
Pray, now, you seamen know to sing.”
“I’m old,” he breathed.—“So’s many a tree,
Yet green the leaves and dance in glee.”
The Arnaut made the scabbard ring:
“Sing, man, and here’s the chorus—sing!”
“Sing, sing!” the Islesman, “bear the bell;
Sing, and the other songs excel.”
“Ay, sing,” cried Rolfe, “here now’s a sample;
’Tis virtue teaches by example:
“Jars of honey,
Wine-skin, dates, and macaroni:
Falling back upon the senses—
O, the wrong—
Need take up with recompenses:
Song, a song!”
They sang about him till he said:
“Sing, sirs, I cannot: this I’ll do,
Repeat a thing Methodius made,
Good chaplain of The Apostles’ crew:
“Priest in ship with saintly bow,
War-ship named from Paul and Peter
Grandly carved on castled prow;
Gliding by the grouped Canaries
Under liquid light of Mary’s
Mellow star of eventide;
Lulled by tinklings at the side,
I, along the taffrail leaning,
Yielding to the ship’s careening,
Shared that peace the upland owns
Where the palm—the palm and pine
Meeting on the frontier line
Seal a truce between the zones.
This be ever! (mused I lowly)
Dear repose is this and holy;
Like the Gospel it is gracious
And prevailing.—There, audacious—
Boom! the signal-gun it jarred me,
Flash and boom together marred me,
And I thought of horrid war;
But never moved grand Paul and Peter,
Never blenched Our Lady’s star!”
14. THE REVEL CLOSED
“Bless that good chaplain,” Derwent here;
“All doves and halcyons round the sphere
Defend him from war’s rude alarms!”
Then (Oh, sweet impudence of wine)
Then rising and approaching Vine
In suppliant way: “I crave an alms:
Since this gray guest, this serious one,
Our wrinkled old Euroclydon,
Since even he, with genial breath
His quota here contributeth,
Helping our gladness to prolong—
Thou too! Nay, nay; as everywhere
Water is found if one not spare
To delve—tale, prithee now, or song!”
Vine’s brow shot up with crimson lights
As may the North on frosty nights
Over Dilston Hall and his low state—
The fair young Earl whose bloody end
Those red rays do commemorate,
And take his name.
Now all did bend
In chorus, crying, “Tale or song!”
Investing him. Was no escape
Beset by such a Bacchic throng.
“Ambushed in leaves we spy your grape,”
Cried Derwent; “black but juicy one—
A song!”
No way for Vine to shun:
“Well, if you’ll let me here recline
At ease the while, I’ll hum a word
Which in his Florence loft I heard
An artist trill one morning fine:—
“What is beauty? ’tis a dream
Dispensing still with gladness:
The dolphin haunteth not the shoal,
And deeps there be in sadness.
“The rose-leaves, see, disbanded be—
Blowing, about me blowing;
But on the death-bed of the rose
My amaranths are growing.
“His amaranths: a fond conceit,
Yes, last illusion of retreat!
Herman Melville- Complete Poems Page 46