But yesterday—how did they then,
In new uprising of the Red,
The offspring of those Tuileries men?
They made a clothes-stand of the Cross
Before the church; and, on that head
Which bowed for them, could wanton toss
The sword-belt, while the gibing sped.
Transcended rebel angels! Woe
To us; without a God, ’tis woe!”
21. UNGAR AND ROLFE
“Such earnestness! such wear and tear,
And man but a thin gossamer!”
So here the priest aside; then turned,
And, starting: “List! the vesper-bell?
Nay, nay—the hour is passed. But, oh,
He must have supped, Don Hannibal,
Ere now. Come, friends, and shall we go?
This hot discussion, let it stand
And cool; to-morrow we’ll remand.”
“Not yet, I pray,” said Rolfe; “a word;”
And turned toward Ungar; “be adjured,
And tell us if for earth may be
In ripening arts, no guarantee
Of happy sequel.”
“Arts are tools;
But tools, they say are to the strong:
Is Satan weak? weak is the Wrong?
No blessed augury overrules:
Your arts advance in faith’s decay:
You are but drilling the new Hun
Whose growl even now can some dismay;
Vindictive in his heart of hearts,
He schools him in your mines and marts—
A skilled destroyer.”
“But, need own
That portent does in no degree
Westward impend, across the sea.”
“Over there? And do ye not forebode?
Against pretenses void or weak
The impieties of ‘Progress’ speak.
What say these, in effect, to God?
‘How profits it? And who art Thou
That we should serve Thee? Of Thy ways
No knowledge we desire; new ways
We have found out, and better. Go—
Depart from us; we do erase
Thy sinecure: behold, the sun
Stands still no more in Ajalon:
Depart from us!’—And if He do?
(And that He may, the Scripture says)
Is aught betwixt ye and the hells?
For He, nor in irreverent view,
’Tis He distills that savor true
Which keeps good essences from taint;
Where He is not, corruption dwells,
And man and chaos are without restraint.”
“Oh, oh, you do but generalize
In void abstractions.”
“Hypothesize:
If be a people which began
Without impediment, or let
From any ruling which fore-ran;
Even striving all things to forget
But this—the excellence of man
Left to himself, his natural bent,
His own devices and intent;
And if, in satire of the heaven,
A world, a new world have been given
For stage whereon to deploy the event;
If such a people be——well, well,
One hears the kettle-drums of hell!
Exemplary act awaits its place
In drama of the human race.”
“Is such act certain?” Rolfe here ran;
“Not much is certain.”
“God is—man.
The human nature, the divine—
Have both been proved by many a sign.
’Tis no astrologer and star.
The world has now so old become,
Historic memory goes so far
Backward through long defiles of doom;
Whoso consults it honestly
That mind grows prescient in degree;
For man, like God, abides the same
Always, through all variety
Of woven garments to the frame.”
“Yes, God is God, and men are men,
Forever and for aye. What then?
There’s Circumstance—there’s Time; and these
Are charged with store of latencies
Still working in to modify.
For mystic text that you recall,
Dilate upon, and e’en apply—
(Although I seek not to decry)
Theology’s scarce practical.
But leave this: the New World’s the theme.
Here, to oppose your dark extreme,
(Since an old friend is good at need)
To an old thought I’ll fly. Pray, heed:
Those waste-weirs which the New World yields
To inland freshets—the free vents
Supplied to turbid elements;
The vast reserves—the untried fields;
These long shall keep off and delay
The class-war, rich-and-poor-man fray
Of history. From that alone
Can serious trouble spring. Even that
Itself, this good result may own—
The first firm founding of the state.”
Here ending, with a watchful air
Inquisitive, Rolfe waited him.
And Ungar:
“True heart do ye bear
In this discussion? or but trim
To draw my monomania out,
For monomania, past doubt,
Some of ye deem it. Yet I’ll on.
Yours seems a reasonable tone;
But in the New World things make haste:
Not only men, the state lives fast—
Fast breeds the pregnant eggs and shells,
The slumberous combustibles
Sure to explode. ’Twill come, ’twill come!
One demagogue can trouble much:
How of a hundred thousand such?
And universal suffrage lent
To back them with brute element
Overwhelming? What shall bind these seas
Of rival sharp communities
Unchristianized? Yea, but ’twill come!”
“What come?”
“Your Thirty Years (of) War.”
“Should fortune’s favorable star
Avert it?”
“Fortune? nay, ’tis doom.”
“Then what comes after? spasms but tend
Ever, at last, to quiet.”
“Know,
Whatever happen in the end,
Be sure ’twill yield to one and all
New confirmation of the fall
Of Adam. Sequel may ensue,
Indeed, whose germs one now may view:
Myriads playing pygmy parts—
Debased into equality:
In glut of all material arts
A civic barbarism may be:
Man disennobled—brutalized
By popular science—Atheized
Into a smatterer——”
“Oh, oh!”
“Yet knowing all self need to know
In self’s base little fallacy;
Dead level of rank commonplace:
An Anglo-Saxon China, see,
May on your vast plains shame the race
In the Dark Ages of Democracy.”
America!
In stilled estate,
On him, half-brother and co-mate—
In silence, and with vision dim
Rolfe, Vine, and Clarel gazed on him;
/> They gazed, nor one of them found heart
To upbraid the crotchet of his smart,
Bethinking them whence sole it came,
Though birthright he renounced in hope,
Their sanguine country’s wonted claim.
Nor dull they were in honest tone
To some misgivings of their own:
They felt how far beyond the scope
Of elder Europe’s saddest thought
Might be the New World’s sudden brought
In youth to share old age’s pains—
To feel the arrest of hope’s advance,
And squandered last inheritance;
And cry—“To Terminus build fanes!
Columbus ended earth’s romance:
No New World to mankind remains!”
22. OF WICKEDNESS THE WORD
Since, for the charity they knew,
None cared the exile to upbraid
Or further breast—while yet he threw,
In silence that oppressive weighed,
The after-influence of his spell—
The priest in light disclaimer said
To Rolfe apart: “The icicle,
The dagger-icicle draws blood;
But give it sun!” “You mean his mood
Is accident—would melt away
In fortune’s favorable ray.
But if ’tis happiness he lacks,
Why, let the gods warm all cold backs
With that good sun. But list!”
In vent
Of thought, abrupt the malcontent:
“What incantation shall make less
The ever-upbubbling wickedness!
Is this fount nature’s?”
Under guard
Asked Vine: “Is wickedness the word?”
“The right word? Yes; but scarce the thing
Is there conveyed; for one need know
Wicked has been the tampering
With wickedness the word.” “Even so?”
“Ay, ridicule’s light sacrilege
Has taken off the honest edge—
Quite turned aside—perverted all
That Saxon term and Scriptural.”
“Restored to the incisive wedge,
What means it then, this wickedness?”
Ungar regarded him with look
Of steady search: “And wilt thou brook?
Thee leaves it whole?—This wickedness
(Might it retake true import well)
Means not default, nor vulgar vice,
Nor Adam’s lapse in Paradise;
But worse: ’twas this evoked the hell—
Gave in the conscious soul’s recess
Credence to Calvin. What’s implied
In that deep utterance decried
Which Christians labially confess—
Be born anew?”
“Ah, overstate
Thou dost!” the priest sighed; “but look there!
No jarring theme may violate
Yon tender evening sky! How fair
These olive-orchards: see, the sheep
Mild drift toward the folds of sleep.
The blessed Nature! still her glance
Returns the love she well receives
From hearts that with the stars advance,
Each heart that in the goal believes!”
Ungar, though nettled, as might be,
At these bland substitutes in plea
(By him accounted so) yet sealed
His lips. In fine, all seemed to yield
With one consent a truce to talk.
But Clarel, who, since that one hour
Of unreserve on Saba’s tower,
Less relished Derwent’s pleasant walk
Of myrtles, hardly might remain
Uninfluenced by Ungar’s vein:
If man in truth be what you say,
And such the prospects for the clay,
And outlook of the future—cease!
What’s left us but the senses’ sway?
Sinner, sin out life’s petty lease:
We are not worth the saving. Nay,
For me, if thou speak true—but ah,
Yet, yet there gleams one beckoning star—
So near the horizon, judge I right
That ’tis of heaven?
But wanes the light—
The evening Angelus is rolled:
They rise, and seek the convent’s fold.
23. DERWENT AND ROLFE
There as they wend, Derwent his arm,
Demure, and brotherly, and grave,
Slips into Rolfe’s: “A bond we have;
We lock, we symbolize it, see;
Yes, you and I: but he, but he!”
And checked himself, as under warm
Emotion. Rolfe kept still. “Unlike,
Unlike! Don Hannibal through storm
Has passed; yet does his sunshine strike.
But Ungar, clouded man! No balm
He’ll find in that unhappy vein;”
Pausing, awaiting Rolfe again.
Rolfe held his peace. “But grant indeed
His strictures just—how few will heed!
The hippopotamus is tough;
Well bucklered too behind. Enough:
Man has two sides: keep on the bright.”
“Two sides imply that one’s not right;
So that won’t do.”—“Wit, wit!”—“Nay, truth.”
“Sententious are ye, pithy—sooth!”
Yet quickened now that Rolfe began
To find a tongue, he sprightlier ran:
“As for his Jeremiad spells,
Shall these the large hope countermand?
The world’s outlived the oracles,
And the people never will disband!
Stroll by my hedge-rows in the June,
The chirruping quite spoils his tune.”
“Ay, birds,” said Rolfe; nor more would own.
“But, look: to hold the censor-tone,
One need be qualified: is he?”
“He’s wise.” “Too vehemently wise!
His factious memories tyrannize
And wrest the judgment.” “In degree,
Perchance.” “But come: shall we accord
Credentials to that homely sword
He wears? Would it had more of grace!
But ’tis in serviceable case.”
“Right! war’s his business.” “Business, say you?”
Resenting the unhandsome word;
“Unsay it quickly, friend, I pray you!
Fine business driving men through fires
To Hades, at the bidding blind
Of Heaven knows whom! but, now I mind,
In this case ’tis the Turk that hires
A Christian for that end.”—“May be,”
Said Rolfe. “And pretty business too
Is war for one who did instill
So much concern for Lincoln Hugh
Ground up by Mammon in the mill.
Or was it rhetoric?” “May be,”
Said Rolfe. “And let me hint, may be
You’re curt to-day. But, yes, I see:
Your countryman he is. Well, well,
That’s right—you’re right; no more I’ll dwell:
Your countryman; and, yes, at heart
Rather you sidled toward his part
Though playing well the foil, pardee!
Oh, now you stare: no need: a trick
To deal your dullish moo
d a prick.
But mind you, though, some things you said
By Jordan lounging in the shade
When our discourse so freely ran?
But whatsoe’er reserves be yours
Touching your native clime and clan,
And whatsoe’er his thought abjures;
Still, when he’s criticised by one
Not of the tribe, not of the zone—
Chivalric still, though doggedly,
You stand up for a countryman:
I like your magnanimity;”
And silent pressed the enfolded arm
As he would so transmit a charm
Along the nerve, which might insure,
However cynic challenge ran,
Faith genial in at least one man
Fraternal in love’s overture.
24. TWILIGHT
“Over the river
In gloaming, ah, still do ye plain?
Dove—dove in the mangroves,
How dear is thy pain!
“Sorrow—but fondled;
Reproaches that never upbraid
Spite the passion, the yearning
Of love unrepaid.
“Teach me, oh! teach me
Thy cadence, that Inez may thrill
With the bliss of the sadness,
And love have his will!”
Through twilight of mild evening pale,
As now returning slow they fare—
In dubious keeping with the dale
And legends, floating came that air
From one invisible in shade,
Singing and lightly sauntering on
Toward the cloisters. Pause they made;
But he a lateral way had won:
Viewless he passed, as might a wave
Rippling, which doth a frigate lave
At anchor in the midnight road.
Clarel a fleeting thought bestowed:
Unkenned! to thee what thoughts belong—
Announced by such a tropic song.
25. THE INVITATION
Returned to harbor, Derwent sought
His Mexic friend; and him he found
At home in by-place of a court
Of private kind—some tools around,
And planks and joiner’s stuff, and more,
With little things, and odds and ends,
Conveniences which ease commends
Unto some plain old bachelor.
And here, indeed, one such a stay
At whiles did make; a placid friar,
A sexton gratis in his way,
Herman Melville- Complete Poems Page 61