Herman Melville- Complete Poems
Page 52
“But first to show
A curious caverned place hard by.
Another crazed monk—start not so—
He’s gone, clean vanished from the eye!
Another crazed one, deemed inspired,
Long dwelt in it. He never tired—
Ah, here it is, the vestibule.”
They reach an inner grotto cool,
Lighted by fissure up in dome;
Fixed was each thing, each fixture stone:
Stone bed, bench, cross, and altar—stone.
“How like you it—Habbibi’s home?
You see these writings on the wall?
His craze was this: he heard a call
Ever from heaven: O scribe, write, write!
Write this—that write—to these indite—
To them! Forever it was—write!
Well, write he did, as here you see.
What is it all?”
“Dim, dim to me,”
Said Derwent; “ay, obscurely traced;
And much is rubbed off or defaced.
But here now, this is pretty clear:
‘I, Self, I am the enemy
Of all. From me deliver me,
O Lord.’—Poor man!—But here, dim here:
‘There is a hell over which mere hell
Serves—for—a—heaven.’—Oh, terrible!
Profound pit that must be!—What’s here
Half faded: ‘. . . teen . . six,
The hundred summers run,
Except it be in cicatrix
The aloe—flowers—none.’—
Ah, Nostradamus; prophecy
Is so explicit.—But this, see.
Much blurred again: ‘. . . testimony,
. . . . . grown fat and gray,
The lion down, and—full of honey,
The bears shall rummage—him—in—May.’—
Yes, bears like honey.—Yon gap there
Well lights the grotto; and this air
Is dry and sweet; nice citadel
For study.”
“Or dessert-room. So,
Hast seen enough? then let us go.
Write, write—indite!—what peer you at?”
Emerging, Derwent, turning round,
Small text spied which the door-way crowned.
“Ha, new to me; and what is that?”
The Islesman asked; “pray read it o’er.”
“‘Ye here who enter Habbi’s den,
Beware what hence ye take!’ ” “Amen!
Why didn’t he say that before?
But what’s to take? all’s fixture here.”
“Occult, occult,” said Derwent, “queer.”
Returning now, they made descent,
The pilot trilling as they went:
“King Cole sang as he clinked the can,
Sol goes round, and the mill-horse too:
A thousand pound for a fire-proof man!
The devil vows he’s the sole true-blue;
And the prick-louse sings,
See the humbug of kings—
’Tis I take their measure, ninth part of a man!”
Lightly he sheds it off (mused then
The priest), a man for Daniel’s den.
In by-place now they join the twain,
Belex, and Og in red Fez bald;
And Derwent, in his easy vein
Ear gives to chat, with wine and gladness,
Pleased to elude the Siddim madness,
And, yes, even that in grotto scrawled;
Nor grieving that each pilgrim friend
For time now leave him to unbend.
Yet, intervening even there,
A touch he knew of gliding care:
We loiterers whom life can please
(Thought he) could we but find our mates
Ever! but no; before the gates
Of joy, lie some who carp and tease:
Collisions of men’s destinies!—
But quick, to nullify that tone
He turned to mark the jovial one
Telling the twain, the martial pair,
Of Cairo and his tarry there;
And how, his humorous soul to please,
He visited the dervishes,
The dancing ones: “But what think ye?
The captain-dervish vowed to me
That those same cheeses, whirl-round-rings
He made, were David’s—yes, the king’s
Who danced before the Ark. But, look:
This was the step King David took;”
And cut fantastic pigeon-wings.
28. MORTMAIN AND THE PALM
“See him!—How all your threat he braves,
Saba! your ominous architraves
Impending, stir him not a jot.
Scarce he would change with me in lot:
Wiser am I?—Curse on this store
Of knowledge! Nay, ’twas cursed of yore.
Knowledge is power: tell that to knaves;
’Tis knavish knowledge: the true lore
Is impotent for earth: ‘Thyself
Thou can’st not save; come down from cross!’
They cast it in His teeth; trim Pelf
Stood by, and jeered, Is gold then dross?—
Cling to His tree, and there find hope:
Me it but makes a misanthrope.
Makes? nay, but ’twould, did not the hate
Dissolve in pity of the fate.—
This legend, dream, and fact of life!
The drooping hands, the dancing feet
Which in the endless series meet;
And rumors of No God so rife!”
The Swede, the brotherless—who else?
’Twas he, upon the brink opposed,
To whom the Lesbian was disclosed
In antic: hence those syllables.
Ere long (at distance from that scene)
A voice dropped on him from a screen
Above: “Ho, halt!” It chanced to be
The challenged here no start incurred,
Forewarned of near vicinity
Of Cyril and his freak. He heard,
Looked up, and answered, “Well?” “The word!”
“Hope,” in derision. “Stand, delay:
That was pass-word for yesterday.”
“Despair.” “Advance.”
He, going, scanned
The testimony of the hand
Gnawed in the dream: “Yea, but ’tis here.
Despair? nay, death; and what’s death’s cheer?
Death means—the sea-beat gains the shore;
He’s home; his watch is called no more.
So looks it. Not I tax thee, Death,
With that, which might make Strength a trembler,—
While yet for me it scants no breath—
That, quiet under sleepiest mound,
Thou art a dangerous dissembler;
That he whose evil is profound
In multiform of life’s disguises,
Whom none dare check, and naught chastises,
And in his license thinks no bound—
For him thou hoardest strange surprises!—
But what—the Tree? O holy Palm,
If ’tis a world where hearts wax warm
Oftener through hate than love, and chief
The bland thing be the adder’s charm,
And the true thing virtue’s ancient grief—
Thee yet it nourishes—even thee!
“Envoy, whose looks the pang assuage,
Disclose thy heave
nly embassage!
That lily-rod which Gabriel bore
To Mary, kneeling her before,
Announcing a God, the mother she;
That budded stalk from Paradise—
Like that thou shin’st in thy device:
And sway’st thou over here toward me—
Toward me can such a symbol sway!”
In rounded turn of craggy way,
Across the interposed abyss,
He had encountered it. Submiss,
He dropped upon the under stone,
And soon in such a dream was thrown
He felt as floated up in cheer
Of saint borne heavenward from the bier.
Indeed, each wakeful night, and fast
(That feeds and keeps what clay would clutch)
With thrills which he did still outlast,
His fibres made so fine in end
That though in trials fate can lend
Firm to withstand, strong to contend;
Sensitive he to a spirit’s touch.
A wind awakened him—a breath.
He lay like light upon the heath,
Alive though still. And all came back,
The years outlived, with all their black;
While bright he saw the angel-tree
Across the gulf alluring sway:
Come over! be—forever be
As in the trance.—“Wilt not delay?
Yet hear me in appeal to thee:
When the last light shall fade from me,
If, groping round, no hand I meet;
Thee I’ll recall—invoke thee, Palm:
Comfort me then, thou Paraclete!
The lull late mine beneath thy lee,
Then, then renew, and seal the calm.”
Upon the ledge of hanging stair,
And under Vine, invisible there,
With eyes still feeding on the Tree,
Relapsed he lingered as in Lethe’s snare.
29. ROLFE AND THE PALM
Pursued, the mounted robber flies
Unawed through Kedron’s plunged demesne:
The clink, and clinking echo dies:
He vanishes: a long ravine.
And stealthy there, in little chinks
Betwixt or under slab-rocks, slinks
The dwindled amber current lean.
Far down see Rolfe there, hidden low
By ledges slant. Small does he show
(If eagles eye), small and far off
As Mother-Cary’s bird in den
Of Cape Horn’s hollowing billow-trough,
When from the rail where lashed they bide
The sweep of overcurling tide,—
Down, down, in bonds the seamen gaze
Upon that flutterer in glen
Of waters where it sheltered plays,
While, over it, each briny hight
Is torn with bubbling torrents white
In slant foam tumbling from the snow
Upon the crest; and far as eye
Can range through mist and scud which fly,
Peak behind peak the liquid summits grow.
By chance Rolfe won the rocky stair
At base, and queried if it were
Man’s work or nature’s, or the twain
Had wrought together in that lane
Of high ascent, so crooked with turns
And flanked by coignes, that one discerns
But links thereof in flights encaved,
Whate’er the point of view. Up, slow
He climbed for little space; then craved
A respite, turned and sat; and, lo,
The Tree in salutation waved
Across the chasm. Remindings swell;
Sweet troubles of emotion mount—
Sylvan reveries, and they well
From memory’s Bandusia fount;
Yet scarce the memory alone,
But that and question merged in one:
“Whom weave ye in,
Ye vines, ye palms? whom now, Soolee?
Lives yet your Indian Arcady?
His sunburnt face what Saxon shows—
His limbs all white as lilies be—
Where Eden, isled, impurpled glows
In old Mendanna’s sea?
Takes who the venture after me?
“Who now adown the mountain dell
(Till mine, by human foot untrod—
Nor easy, like the steps to hell)
In panic leaps the appalling crag,
Alighting on the cloistral sod
Where strange Hesperian orchards drag,
Walled round by cliff and cascatelle—
Arcades of Iris; and though lorn,
A truant ship-boy overworn,
Is hailed for a descended god?
“Who sips the vernal cocoa’s cream—
The nereids dimpling in the darkling stream?
For whom the gambol of the tricksy dream—
Even Puck’s substantiated scene,
Yea, much as man might hope and more than heaven may mean?
“And whom do priest and people sue,
In terms which pathos yet shall tone
When memory comes unto her own,
To dwell with them and ever find them true:
‘Abide, for peace is here:
Behold, nor heat nor cold we fear,
Nor any dearth: one happy tide—
A dance, a garland of the year:
Abide!’
“But who so feels the stars annoy,
Upbraiding him,—how far astray!—
That he abjures the simple joy,
And hurries over the briny world away?
“Renouncer! is it Adam’s flight
Without compulsion or the sin?
And shall the vale avenge the slight
By haunting thee in hours thou yet shalt win?”
He tarried. And each swaying fan
Sighed to his mood in threnodies of Pan.
30. THE CELIBATE
All distant through that afternoon
The student kept, nor might attune
His heart to any steadfast thought
But Ruth—still Ruth, yet strange involved
With every mystery unresolved
In time and fate. In cloud thus caught,
Her image labored like a star
Fitful revealed in midnight heaven
When inland from the sea-coast far
The storm-rack and dark scud are driven.
Words scarce might tell his frame, in sooth:
’Twas Ruth, and oh, much more than Ruth.
That flank of Kedron still he held
Which is built up; and, passing on—
While now sweet peal of chimings swelled
From belfry old, withdrawn in zone—
A way through cloisters deep he won
And winding vaults that slope to hight;
And heard a voice, espied a light
In twinkle through far passage dim,
And aimed for it, a friendly gleam;
And so came out upon the Tree
Mid-poised, and ledge-built balcony
Inrailed, and one who, leaning o’er,
Beneath the Palm—from shore to shore
Of Kedron’s overwhelming walls
And up and down her gap and grave,
A golden cry sent, such as calls
To creatures which the summons know.
And, launching from crag, tower, and cave
Beatif
ied in flight they go:
St. Saba’s doves, in Saba bred.
For wonted bounty they repair,
These convent-pensioners of air;
Fly to their friend; from hand outspread
Or fluttering at his feet are fed.
Some, iridescent round his brow,
Wheel, and with nimbus him endow.
Not fortune’s darling here was seen,
But heaven’s elect. The robe of blue
So sorted with the doves in hue
Prevailing, and clear skies serene
Without a cloud; so pure he showed—
Of stature tall, in aspect bright—
He looked an almoner of God,
Dispenser of the bread of light.
’Twas not the intellectual air—
Not solely that, though that be fair:
Another order, and more rare—
As high above the Plato mind
As this above the Mammon kind.
In beauty of his port unsealed,
To Clarel part he stood revealed
At first encounter; but the sweet
Small pecking bills and hopping feet
Had previous won; the host urbane,
In courtesy that could not feign,
Mute welcome yielding, and a seat.
It charmed away half Clarel’s care,
And charmed the picture that he saw,
To think how like that turtle pair
Which Mary, to fulfill the law,
From Bethlehem to temple brought
For offering; these Saba doves
Seemed natives—not of Venus’ court
Voluptuous with wanton wreath—
But colonnades where Enoch roves,
Or walks with God, as Scripture saith.
Nor myrtle here, but sole the Palm
Whose vernal fans take rich release
From crowns of foot-stalks golden warm.
O martyr’s scepter, type of peace,
And trouble glorified to calm!
What stillness in the almoner’s face:
Nor Fomalhaut more mild may reign
Mellow above the purple main
Of autumn hills. It was a grace
Beyond medallions ye recall.
The student murmured, filial—
“Father,” and tremulously gleamed,
“Here, sure, is peace.” The father beamed;
The nature of the peace was such
It shunned to venture any touch
Of word. “And yet,” went Clarel on;