But faltered there. The saint but glanced.
“Father, if Good, ’tis unenhanced:
No life domestic do ye own
Within these walls: woman I miss.
Like cranes, what years from time’s abyss
Their flight have taken, one by one,
Since Saba founded this retreat:
In cells here many a stifled moan
Of lonely generations gone;
And more shall pine as more shall fleet.”
With dove on wrist, he, robed, stood hushed,
Mused on the bird, and softly brushed.
Scarce reassured by air so mute,
Anxiously Clarel urged his suit.
The celibate let go the dove;
Cooing, it won the shoulder—lit
Even at his ear, as whispering it.
But he one pace made in remove,
And from a little alcove took
A silver-clasped and vellum book;
And turned a leaf, and gave that page
For answer.—
Rhyme, old hermit-rhyme
Composed in Decius’ cruel age
By Christian of Thebæan clime:
’Twas David’s son, and he of Dan,
With him misloved that fled the bride,
And Job whose wife but mocked his ban;
Then rose, or in redemption ran—
The rib restored to Adam’s side,
And man made whole, as man began.
And lustral hymns and prayers were here:
Renouncings, yearnings, charges dread
Against our human nature dear:
Worship and wail, which, if misled,
Not less might fervor high instill
In hearts which, striving in their fear
Of clay, to bridle, curb or kill;
In the pure desert of the will
Chastised, live the vowed life austere.
The given page the student scanned:
Started—reviewed, nor might withstand.
He turned; the celibate was gone;
Over the gulf he hung alone:
Alone, but for the comment caught
Or dreamed, in face seen far below,
Upturned toward the Palm in thought,
Or else on him—he scarce might know.
Fixed seemed it in assent indeed
Which indexed all? It was the Swede.
Over the Swede, upon the stair—
Long Bethel-stair of ledges brown
Sloping as from the heaven let down—
Apart lay Vine; lowermost there,
Rolfe he discerned; nor less the three,
While of each other unaware,
In one consent of frame might be.
How vaguely, while yet influenced so
By late encounter, and his glance
Rested on Vine, his reveries flow
Recalling that repulsed advance
He knew by Jordan in the wood,
And the enigma unsubdued—
Possessing Ruth, nor less his heart
Aye hungering still, in deeper part
Unsatisfied. Can be a bond
(Thought he) as David sings in strain
That dirges beauteous Jonathan,
Passing the love of woman fond?
And may experience but dull
The longing for it? Can time teach?
Shall all these billows win the lull
And shallow on life’s hardened beach?—
He lingered. The last dove had fled,
And nothing breathed—breathed, waved, or fed,
Along the uppermost sublime
Blank ridge. He wandered as in sleep;
A saffron sun’s last rays were shed;
More still, more solemn waxed the time,
Till Apathy upon the steep
Sat one with Silence and the Dead.
31. THE RECOIL
“But who was SHE (if Luke attest)
Whom generations hail for blest—
Immaculate though human one;
What diademed and starry Nun—
Bearing in English old the name
And hallowed style of HOLIDAME;
She, She, the Mater of the Rood—
Sprang she from Ruth’s young sisterhood?”
On cliff in moonlight roaming out,
So Clarel, thrilled by deep dissent,
Revulsion from injected doubt
And many a strange presentiment.
But came ere long profound relapse:
The Rhyme recurred, made voids or gaps
In dear relations; while anew,
From chambers of his mind’s review,
Emerged the saint, who with the Palm
Shared heaven on earth in gracious calm,
Even as his robe partook the hue.
And needs from that high mentor part?
Is strength too strong to teach the weak?
Though tame the life seem, turn the cheek,
Does the call elect the hero-heart?—
The thunder smites our tropic bloom:
If live the abodes unvexed and balmy—
No equinox with annual doom;
If Eden’s wafted from the plume
Of shining Raphael, Michael palmy;
If these in more than fable be,
With natures variously divine—
Through all their ranks they are masculine;
Else how the power with purity?
Or in yon worlds of light is known
The clear intelligence alone?
Express the Founder’s words declare,
Marrying none is in the heaven;
Yet love in heaven itself to spare—
Love feminine! Can Eve be riven
From sex, and disengaged retain
Its charm? Think this—then may ye feign
The perfumed rose shall keep its bloom,
Cut off from sustenance of loam.
But if Eve’s charm be not supernal,
Enduring not divine transplanting—
Love kindled thence, is that eternal?
Here, here’s the hollow—here the haunting!
Ah, love, ah wherefore thus unsure?
Linked art thou—locked, with Self impure?
Yearnings benign the angels know,
Saint Francis and Saint John have felt:
Good-will—desires that overflow,
And reaching far as life is dealt.
That other love!—Oh heavy load—
Is naught then trustworthy but God?
On more hereof, derived in frame
From the eremite’s Thebæan flame,
Mused Clarel, taking self to task,
Nor might determined thought reclaim:
But, the waste invoking, this did ask:
“Truth, truth cherubic! claim’st thou worth
Foreign to time and hearts which dwell
Helots of habit old as earth
Suspended ’twixt the heaven and hell?”
But turn thee, rest the burden there;
To-morrow new deserts must thou share.
32. EMPTY STIRRUPS
The gray of dawn. A tremor slight:
The trouble of imperfect light
Anew begins. In floating cloud
Midway suspended down the gorge,
A long mist trails white shreds of shroud
How languorous toward the Dead Sea’s verge.
Riders in seat halt by the gate:
Why not set forth? For one t
hey wait
Whose stirrups empty be—the Swede.
Still absent from the frater-hall
Since afternoon and vesper-call,
He, they imagined, had but sought
Some cave in keeping with his thought,
And reappear would with the light
Suddenly as the Gileadite
In Obadiah’s way. But—no,
He cometh not when they would go.
Dismounting, they make search in vain;
Till Clarel—minding him again
Of something settled in his air—
A quietude beyond mere calm—
When seen from ledge beside the Palm
Reclined in nook of Bethel stair,
Thitherward led them in a thrill
Of nervous apprehension, till
Startled he stops, with eyes avert
And indicating hand.—
’Tis he—
So undisturbed, supine, inert—
The filmed orbs fixed upon the Tree—
Night’s dews upon his eyelids be.
To test if breath remain, none tries:
On those thin lips a feather lies—
An eagle’s, wafted from the skies.
The vow: and had the genius heard,
Benignant? nor had made delay,
But, more than taking him at word,
Quick wafted where the palm-boughs sway
In Saint John’s heaven? Some divined
That long had he been undermined
In frame; the brain a tocsin-bell
Overburdensome for citadel
Whose base was shattered. They refrain
From aught but that dumb look that fell
Identifying; feeling pain
That such a heart could beat, and will—
Aspire, yearn, suffer, baffled still,
And end. With monks which round them stood
Concerned, not discomposed in mood,
Interment they provided for—
Heaved a last sigh, nor tarried more.
Nay; one a little lingered there;
’Twas Rolfe. And as the rising sun,
Though viewless yet from Bethel stair,
More lit the mountains, he was won
To invocation, scarce to prayer:
“Holy Morning,
What blessed lore reservest thou,
Withheld from man, that evermore
Without surprise,
But, rather, with a hurtless scorning
In thy placid eyes,
Thou viewest all events alike?
Oh, tell me, do thy bright beams strike
The healing hills of Gilead now?”
And glanced toward the pale one near
In shadow of the crag’s dark brow.—
Did Charity follow that poor bier?
It did; but Bigotry did steer:
Friars buried him without the walls
(Nor in a consecrated bed)
Where vulture unto vulture calls,
And only ill things find a friend:
There let the beak and claw contend,
There the hyena’s cub be fed:
Heaven that disclaims, and him beweeps
In annual showers; and the tried spirit sleeps.
END OF PART 3
PART 4
Bethlehem
1. IN SADDLE
OF OLD, if legend truth aver,
With hearts that did in aim concur,
Three mitered kings—Amerrian,
Apelius, and Damazon—
By miracle in Cassak met
(An Indian city, bards infer);
Thence, prompted by the vision yet
To find the new-born Lord nor err,
Westward their pious feet they set—
With gold and frankincense and myrrh.
Nor failed they, though by deserts vast
And voids and menaces they passed:
They failed not, for a light was given—
The light and pilotage of heaven:
A light, a lead, no longer won
By any, now, who seekers are:
Or fable is it? but if none,
Let man lament the foundered Star.
And Kedron’s pilgrims: In review
The wilds receive those guests anew.
Yet ere, the MANGER now to win,
Their desert march they re-begin,
Belated leaving Saba’s tower;
Reverted glance they grateful throw,
Nor slight the abbot’s parting dower
Whose benedictions with them go.
Nor did the sinner of the isle
From friendly cheer refrain, though lax:
“Our Lady of the Vines beguile
Your travel and bedew your tracks!”
Blithe wishes, which slim mirth bestow;
For, ah, with chill at heart they mind
Two now forever left behind.
But as men drop, replacements rule:
Though fleeting be each part assigned,
The eternal ranks of life keep full:
So here—if but in small degree—
Recruits for fallen ones atone;
The Arnaut and pilgrim from the sea
The muster joining; also one
In military undress dun—
A stranger quite.
The Arnaut rode
For escort mere. His martial stud
A brother seemed—as strong as he,
As brave in trappings, and with blood
As proud, and equal gravity,
Reserving latent mettle. Good
To mark the rider in his seat—
Tall, shapely, powerful and complete;
A’lean, too, in an easy way,
Like Pisa’s Tower confirmed in place,
Nor lacking in subordinate grace
Of lighter beauty. Truth to say,
This horseman seemed to waive command:
Abeyance of the bridle-hand.
But winning space more wide and clear,
He showed in ostentation here
How but a pulse conveyed through rein
Could thrill and fire, or prompt detain.
On dappled steed, in kilt snow-white,
With burnished arms refracting light,
He orbits round the plodding train.
Djalea in quiet seat observes;
’Tis little from his poise he swerves;
Sedate he nods, as he should say:
“Rough road may tame this holiday
Of thine; but pleasant to look on:
Come, that’s polite!” for on the wing,
Or in suspense of curveting
Chiron salutes the Emir’s son.
Meantime, remiss, with dangling sword,
Upon a cloistral beast but sad,
A Saba friar’s befitting pad
(His own steed, having sprained a cord,
Left now behind in convent ward)
The plain-clad soldier, heeding none
Though marked himself, in neutral tone
Maintained his place. His shoulders lithe
Were long-sloped and yet ample, too,
In keeping with each limb and thew:
Waist flexile as a willow withe;
Withal, a slouched reserve of strength,
As in the pard’s luxurious length;
The cheek, high-boned, of copperish show
Enhanced by sun on land and seas;
Long hair, much like a Cherokee’s,
Curving behind
the ear in flow
And veiling part a saber-scar
Slant on the neck, a livid bar;
Nor might the felt hat hide from view
One temple pitted with strange blue
Of powder-burn. Of him you’d say—
A veteran, no more. But nay:
Brown eyes, what reveries they keep—
Sad woods they be, where wild things sleep.
Hereby, and by yet other sign,
To Rolfe, and Clarel part, and Vine,
The stranger stood revealed, confessed
A native of the fair South-West—
Their countryman, though of a zone
Varied in nature from their own:
A countryman—but how estranged!
Nor any word as yet exchanged
With them. But yester-evening’s hour
Then first he came to Saba’s tower,
And saw the Epirot aside
In conference, and word supplied
Touching detention of the troop
Destined to join him for the swoop
Over Jordan. But the pilgrims few
Knew not hereof, not yet they knew,
But deemed him one who took his way
Eccentric in an armed survey
Of Judah.
On the pearl-gray ass
(From Siddim riderless, alas!)
Rode now the timoneer sedate,
Jogging beneath the Druze’s lee,
As well he might, instructed late
What perils in lack of convoy be.
A frater-feeling of the sea
Influenced Rolfe, and made him take
Solace with him of salt romance,
Albeit Agath scarce did wake
To full requital—chill, perchance
Derived from years or diffidence;
Howe’er, in friendly way Rolfe plied
One-sided chat.
As on they ride
And o’er the ridge begin to go,
A parting glance they turn; and lo!
The convent’s twin towers disappear—
Engulfed like a brig’s masts below
Submerging waters. Thence they steer
Upward anew, in lane of steeps—
Ravine hewn-out, as ’twere by sledges;
Inwalled, from ledges unto ledges,
And stepwise still, each rider creeps,
Until, at top, their eyes behold
Judæa in highlands far unrolled.
A horseman so, in easier play
Wheeling aloft (so travelers say)
Up the Moor’s Tower, may outlook gain
Herman Melville- Complete Poems Page 53