Herman Melville- Complete Poems

Home > Fiction > Herman Melville- Complete Poems > Page 51
Herman Melville- Complete Poems Page 51

by Herman Melville


  Unto the toiler; who returned:

  “Cyril. ’Tis long since that he craved

  Over against to dwell encaved.

  In youth he was a soldier. Go.”

  But Clarel might not end it so:

  “I pray thee, friend, what grief or zeal

  Could so unhinge him? that reveal.”

  “Go—ask your world:” and grim toiled on,

  Fitting his clamp as if alone,

  Dismissing him austerely thus.

  And Clarel, sooth, felt timorous.

  Conscious of seeds within his frame

  Transmitted from the early gone,

  Scarce in his heart might he disclaim

  That challenge from the shrouded one.

  He walked in vision—saw in fright

  Where through the limitless of night

  The spirits innumerable lie,

  Strewn like snared miners in vain flight

  From the dull black-damp. Die—to die!

  To be, then not to be! to end,

  And yet time never, never suspend

  His going.—This is cowardice

  To brood on this!—Ah, Ruth, thine eyes

  Abash these base mortalities!

  But slid the change, anew it slid

  As by the Dead Sea marge forbid:

  The vision took another guise:

  From ’neath the closing, lingering lid

  Ruth’s glance of love is glazing met,

  Reproaching him: Dost tarry, tarry yet?

  25. DERWENT AND THE LESBIAN

  If where, in blocks unbeautified,

  But lath and plaster may divide

  The cot of dole from bed of bride;

  Here, then, a page’s slender shell

  Is thick enough to set between

  The graver moral, lighter mien—

  The student and the cap-and-bell.

  ’Tis nature.

  Pastime to achieve,

  After he reverent did leave

  The dozer in the gallery,

  Derwent, good man of pleasantry,

  He sauntered by the stables old,

  And there the ass spied through a door,

  Lodged in a darksome stall or hold,

  The head communing with the floor.

  Taking some barley, near at hand,

  He entered, but was brought to stand,

  Hearing a voice: “Don’t bother her;

  She cares not, she, for provender;

  Respect her nunnery, her cell:

  She’s pondering, see, the asses’ hell.”

  He turned; it was the Lesbian wag,

  Who offered straight to be his guide

  Even anywhere, be it vault or crag.

  “Well, thanks; but first to feed your nun,

  She fasts overmuch.—There, it is done.

  Come show me, do, that famous tide

  Evoked up from the waste, they tell,

  The canonized abbot’s miracle,

  St. Saba’s fount: where foams it, pray?”

  “Near where the damned ones den.” “What say?”

  “Down, plummets down. But come along;”

  And leading, whiled the way with song:

  “Saintly lily, credit me,

  Sweet is the thigh of the honey-bee!

  Ruddy ever and oleose,

  Ho for the balm of the red, red rose!”

  Stair after stair, and stair again,

  And ladder after ladder free,

  Lower and steeper, till the strain

  Of cord irked Derwent: “Verily,

  E’en as but now you lightly said,

  ’Tis to Avemus we are bending;

  And how much further this descending?”

  At last they dropped down on the bed

  Of Kedron, sought a cavern dead

  And there the fount.

  “’Tis cool to sip,

  I’m told; my cup, here ’tis; wilt dip?”

  And proffered it: “With me, with me,

  Alas, this natural dilution

  Of water never did agree;

  Mine is a touchy constitution;

  ’Tis a respectable fluid though.

  Ah, you don’t care. Well, come out, do.

  The thing to mark here’s not the well,

  But Saba in her crescent swell,

  Terrace on terrace piled. And see,

  Up there by yon small balcony

  Our famous palm stands sentinel.

  Are you a good believer?” “Why?”

  “Because that blessed tree (not I,

  But all our monks avouch it so)

  Was set a thousand years ago

  By dibble in St. Saba’s hand.”

  “Indeed? Heaven crown him for it. Palm!

  Thou benediction in the land,

  A new millennium may’st thou stand:

  So fair, no fate would do thee harm.”

  Much he admired the impressive view;

  Then facing round and gazing up

  Where soared the crags: “Yon grottoes few

  Which make the most ambitious group

  Of all the laura row on row,

  Can one attain?” “Forward!” And so

  Up by a cloven rift they plied—

  Saffron and black—branded beside,

  Like to some felon’s wall of cell

  Smoked with his name. Up they impel

  Till Derwent, overwearied, cried:

  “Dear Virgil mine, you are so strong,

  But I, thy Dante, am nigh dead.”

  “Who daunts ye, friend? don’t catch the thread.”

  “The ascending path was ever long.”

  “Ah yes; well, cheer it with a song:

  “My love but she has little feet

  And slippers of the rose,

  From under—Oh, the lavender sweet—

  Just peeping out, demurely neat;

  But she, she never knows—

  No, no, she never knows!

  “A dimpled hand is hers, and e’en

  As dainty as her toes;

  In mine confiding it she’ll lean

  Till heaven knows what my tinglings mean;

  But she, she never knows—

  Oh no, she never knows!

  “No, never!—Hist!”

  “Nay, revelers, stay.

  Lachryma Christi makes ye glad!

  Where joys he now shall next go mad?

  His snare the spider weaves in sun:

  But ye, your lease has yet to run;

  Go, go: from ye no countersign.”

  Such incoherence! where lurks he,

  The ghoul, the riddler? in what mine?

  It came from an impending crag

  Or cleft therein, or cavity.

  The man of bins a bit did drag;

  But quick to Derwent, “Never lag:

  A crazy friar; but prithee, haste:

  I know him,—Cyril; there, we’ve passed.”

  “Well, that is queer—the queerest thing,”

  Said Derwent, breathing nervously.

  “He’s ever ready with his sting,

  Though dozing in his grotto dull.”

  “Demented—pity! let him be.”

  “Ay, if he like that kind of hull,

  Let the poor wasp den in the skull.”

  “What’s that?” here Derwent; “that shrill cry?”

  And glanced aloft; “for mercy, look!”

  A great bird crossed high up in sky

  Over the gulf; and, under him,

  Its downward fli
ght a black thing took,

  And, eddying by the path’s sheer rim,

  Still spun below: “’Tis Mortmain’s cap,

  The skull-cap!” “Skull is’t? say ye skull

  From heaven flung into Kedron’s lap?

  The gods were ever bountiful!

  No—there: I see. Small as a wren—

  That death’s head of all mortal men—

  Look where he’s perched on topmost crag,

  Bareheaded brooding. Oh, the hag,

  That from the very brow could pluck

  The cap of a philosopher

  So near the sky, then, with a mock,

  Disdain and drop it.” “Queer, ’tis queer

  Indeed!” “One did the same to me,

  Yes, much the same—pecked at my hat,

  I mountain-riding, dozingly,

  Upon a dromedary drear.

  The devil’s in these eagles-gier.

  She ones they are, be sure of that,

  That be so saucy.—Ahoy there, thou!”

  Shooting the voice in sudden freak

  Athwart the chasm, where wended slow

  The timoneer, that pilgrim Greek,

  The graybeard in the mariner trim,

  The same that told the story o’er

  Of crazy compass and the Moor.

  But he, indeed, not hearing him,

  Pursued his way.

  “That salted one,

  That pickled old sea-Solomon,

  Tempests have deafened him, I think.

  He has a tale can make ye wink;

  And pat it comes in too. But dwell!

  Here, sit we down here while I tell.”

  26. VINE AND THE PALM

  Along those ledges, up and down—

  Through terce, sext, nones, in ritual flight

  To vespers and mild evening brown;

  On errand best to angels known,

  A shadow creepeth, brushed by light.

  Behold it stealing now over one

  Reclined aloof upon a stone

  High up. ’Tis Vine.

  And is it I

  (He muses), I that leave the others,

  Or do they leave me? One could sigh

  For Achmed with his hundred brothers:

  How share the gushing amity

  With all? Divine philanthropy!

  For my part, I but love the past—

  The further back the better; yes,

  In the past is the true blessedness;

  The future’s ever overcast—

  The present aye plebeian. So,

  Mar Saba, thou fine long-ago

  Lithographed here, thee do I love;

  And yet to-morrow I’ll remove

  With right good will; a fickle lover

  Is only constant as a rover.

  Here I lie, poor solitaire;

  But see the brave one over there—

  The Palm! Come now, to pass the time

  I’ll try an invocation free—

  Invoke it in a style sublime,

  Yet sad as sad sincerity:—

  “Witness to a watered land,

  Voucher of a vernal year—

  St. Saba’s Palm, why there dost stand?

  Would’st thou win the desert here

  To dreams of Eden? Thy device

  Intimates a Paradise!

  Nay, thy plume would give us proof

  That thou thyself art prince thereof,

  Fair lord of that domain.

  “But, lonely dwelling in thy reign,

  Kinship claimest with the tree

  Worshipped on Delos in the sea—

  Apollo’s Palm? It ended;

  Nor dear divinities befriended.—

  “Thou that pledgest heaven to me,

  Stem of beauty, shaft of light,

  Behold, thou hang’st suspended

  Over Kedron and the night!

  Shall come the fall? shall time disarm

  The grace, the glory of the Palm?

  “Tropic seraph! thou once gone,

  Who then shall take thy office on—

  Redeem the waste, and high appear,

  Apostle of Talassa’s year

  And climes where rivers of waters run?

  “But braid thy tresses—yet thou’rt fair:

  Every age for itself must care:

  Braid thy green tresses; let the grim

  Awaiter find thee never dim!

  Serenely still thy glance be sent

  Plumb down from horror’s battlement:

  Though the deep Fates be concerting

  A reversion, a subverting,

  Still bear thee like the Seraphim.”

  He loitered, lounging on the stair:

  Howbeit, the sunlight still is fair.

  Next meetly here behooves narrate

  How fared they, seated left but late—

  Viewless to Vine above their dell,

  Viewless and quite inaudible:

  Derwent, and his good gossip cosy,

  The man of Lesbos, light and rosy,

  His anecdote about to tell.

  27. MAN AND BIRD

  “Yes, pat it comes in here for me:

  He says, that one fine day at sea—

  ’Twas when he younger was and spry—

  Being at mast-head all alone,

  While he his business there did ply,

  Strapping a block where halyards run,

  He felt a fanning overhead—

  Looked up, and so into the eye

  Of a big bird, red-billed and black

  In plume. It startled him, he said,

  It seemed a thing demoniac.

  From poise, it went to wheeling round him;

  Then, when in daze it well had bound him,

  It pounced upon him with a buffet;

  He, enraged, essayed to cuff it,

  But only had one hand, the other

  Still holding on the spar. And so,

  While yet they shouted from below,

  And yet the wings did whirr and smother,

  The bird tore at his old wool cap,

  And chanced upon the brain to tap.

  Up went both hands; he lost his stay,

  And down he fell—he, and the bird

  Maintaining still the airy fray—

  And, souse, plumped into sea; and heard,

  While sinking there, the piercing gird

  Of the grim fowl, that bore away

  The prize at last.”

  “And did he drown?”

  “Why, there he goes!” and pointed him

  Where still the mariner wended on:

  “’Twas in smooth water; he could swim.

  They luffed and flung the rope, and fired

  The harpoon at the shark untired

  Astern, and dragged him—not the shark,

  But man—they dragged him ’board the barque;

  And down he dropped there with a thump,

  Being water-logged with spongy lump

  Of quilted patches on the shirt

  Of wool, and trowsers. All inert

  He lay. He says, and true’s the word,

  That bitterer than the brine he drank

  Was that shrill gird the while he sank.”

  “A curious story, who e’er heard

  Of such a fray ’twixt man and bird!”­

  “Bird? but he deemed it was the devil,

  And that he carried off his soul

  In the old cap, nor was made whole

  ’Till som
e good vicar did unravel

  The snarled illusion in the skein,

  And he got back his soul again.”

  “But lost his cap. A curious story—

  A bit of Nature’s allegory.

  And—well, what now? You seem perplexed.”

  “And so I am.—Your friend there, see,

  Up on yon peak, he puzzles me.

  Wonder where I shall find him next?

  Last time ’twas where the corn-cribs be—

  Bone-cribs, I mean; in church, you know;

  The blessed martyrs’ holy bones,

  Hard by the porch as in you go—

  Sabaïtes’ bones, the thousand ones

  Of slaughtered monks—so faith avers.

  Dumb, peering in there through the bars

  He stood. Then, in the spiders’ room,

  I saw him there, yes, quite at home

  In long-abandoned library old,

  Conning a venerable tome,

  While dust of ages round him rolled;

  Nor heeded he the big fly’s buzz,

  But mid heaped parchment leaves that mold

  Sat like the bankrupt man of Uz

  Among the ashes, and read and read.

  Much learning, has it made him mad?

  Kedron well suits him, ’twould appear:

  Why don’t he stay, yes, anchor here,

  Turn anchorite?”

  And do ye pun,

  And he, he such an austere one?

  (Thought Derwent then.) Well, run your rig—

  Hard to be comic and revere;

  And once ’twas tittered in mine ear

  St. Paul himself was but a prig.

  Who’s safe from the derision?—Here

  Aloud: “Why, yes; our friend is queer,

  And yet, as some esteem him, not

  Without some wisdom to his lot.”

  “Wisdom? our Cyril is deemed wise.

  In the East here, one who’s lost his wits

  For saint or sage they canonize:

  That’s pretty good for perquisites.

  I’ll tell you: Cyril (some do own)

  Has gained such prescience as to man

  (Through seldom seeing any one),

  To him’s revealed the mortal span

  Of any wight he peers upon.

  And that’s his hobby—as we proved

  But late.”

  “Then not in vain we’ve roved,

  Winning the oracle whose caprice

  Avers we’ve yet to run our lease.”

  “Length to that lease! But let’s return,

  Give over climbing, and adjourn.”

  “Just as you will.”

 

‹ Prev