Through Clarel a revulsion ran,
Such as may seize debarking man
First hearing on Coquimbo’s ground
That subterranean sullen sound
Which dull foreruns the shock. His heart,
In augury fair arrested here,
Upbraided him: Fool! and didst part
From Ruth? Strangely a novel fear
Obtruded—petty, and yet worse
And more from reason too averse,
Than that recurrent haunting bier
Molesting him erewhile. And yet
It was but irritation, fret—
Misgiving that the lines he writ
Upon the eve before the start
For Siddim, failed, or were unfit—
Came short of the occasion’s tone:
To leave her, leave her in grief’s smart:
To leave her—her, the stricken one:
Now first to feel full force of it!
Away! to be but there, but there!
Vain goadings: yet of love true part.
But then the pledge with letter sent,
Though but a trifle, still might bear
A token in dumb argument
Expressive more than words.
With knee
Straining against the saddle-brace,
He urges on; till, near the place
Of Hebrew graves, a light they see
Moving, and figures dimly trace:
Some furtive strange society.
Yet nearer as they ride, the light
Shuts down. “Abide!” enjoined the Druze;
“Waylayers these are none, but Jews,
Or I mistake, who here by night
Have stolen to do grave-digger’s work.
During late outbreak in the town
The bigot in the baser Turk
Was so inflamed, some Hebrews dread
Assault, even here among their dead.
Abide a space; let me ride on.”
Up pushed he, spake, allayed the fright
Of them who had shut down the light
At sound of comers.
Close they draw—
Advancing, lit by fan-shaped rays
Shot from a small dark-lantern’s jaw
Presented pistol-like. They saw
Mattocks and men, in outline dim
On either ominous side of him
From whom went forth that point of blaze.
Resting from labor, each one stays
His implement on grave-stones old.
New-dug, between these, they behold
Two narrow pits: and (nor remote)
Twin figures on the ground they note
Folded in cloaks.
“And who rest there?”
Rolfe sidelong asked.
“Our friends; have care!”
Replied the one that held in view
The lantern, slanting it a’shift,
Plainer disclosing them, and, too,
A broidered scarf, love’s first chance gift,
The student’s (which how well he knew!)
Binding one mantle’s slender span.
With piercing cry, as one distraught,
Down from his horse leaped Clarel—ran,
And hold of that cloak instant caught,
And bared the face. Then (like a man
Shot through the heart, but who retains
His posture) rigid he remains—
The mantle’s border in his hand,
His glazed eyes unremoved. The band
Of Jews—the pilgrims—all look on
Shocked or amazed.
But speech he won:
“No—yes: enchanted here!—her name?”
“Ruth, Nathan’s daughter,” said a Jew
Who kenned him now—the youth that came
Oft to the close; “but, thou—forbear;
The dawn’s at hand and haste is due:
See, by her side, ’tis Agar there.”
“Ruth? Agar?—art thou, God?—But ye—
All swims, and I but blackness see.—
How happed it? speak!”
“The fever—grief:
’Twere hard to tell; was no relief.”
“And ye—your tribe—’twas ye denied
Me access to this virgin’s side
In bitter trial: take my curse!—
O blind, blind, barren universe!
Now am I like a bough torn down,
And I must wither, cloud or sun!—
Had I been near, this had not been.
Do spirits look down upon this scene?—
The message? some last word was left?”
“For thee? no, none; the life was reft
Sudden from Ruth; and Agar died
Babbling of gulls and ocean wide—
Out of her mind.”
“And here’s the furl
Of Nathan’s faith: then perish faith—
’Tis perjured!—Take me, take me, Death!
Where Ruth is gone, me thither whirl,
Where’er it be!”
“Ye do outgo
Mad Korah. Boy, this is the Dale
Of Doom, God’s last assizes; so,
Curb thee; even if sharp grief assail,
Respect these precincts lest thou know
An ill.”
“Give way, quit thou our dead!”
Menaced another, striding out;
“Art thou of us? turn thee about!”
“Spurn—I’ll endure; all spirit’s fled
When one fears nothing.—Bear with me,
Yet bear!—Conviction is not gone
Though faith’s gone: that which shall not be
It ought to be!”
But here came on,
With heavy footing, hollow heard,
Hebrews, which bare rude slabs, to place
Athwart the bodies when interred,
That earth should weigh not on the face;
For coffin was there none; and all
Was make-shift in this funeral.
Uncouthly here a Jew began
To re-adjust Ruth’s cloak. Amain
Did Clarel push him; and, in hiss:
“Not thou—for me!—Alone, alone
In such bride-chamber to lie down!
Nay, leave one hand out—like to this—
That so the bridegroom may not miss
To kiss it first, when soon he comes.—
But ’tis not she!” and hid his face.
They laid them in the under-glooms—
Each pale one in her portioned place.
The gravel, from the bank raked down,
Dull sounded on those slabs of stone,
Grave answering grave—dull and more dull,
Each mass growing more, till either pit was full.
As up from Kedron dumb they drew,
Then first the shivering Clarel knew
Night’s damp. The Martyr’s port is won—
Stephen’s; harsh grates the bolt withdrawn;
And, over Olivet, comes on
Ash Wednesday in the gray of dawn.
31. DIRGE
Stay, Death. Not mine the Christus-wand
Wherewith to charge thee and command:
I plead. Most gently hold the hand
Of her thou leadest far away;
Fear thou to let her naked feet
Tread ashes—but let mosses sweet
Her footing tempt, where’er ye stray.
Shun Orcus; win the moonlit land
Where never any leaf is blown
From lily-stem in Azrael’s hand.
There, till her love rejoin her lowly
(Pensive, a shade, but all her own)
On honey feed her, wild and holy;
Or trance her with thy choicest charm.
And if, ere yet the lover’s free,
Some added dusk thy rule decree—
That shadow only let it be
Thrown in the moon-glade by the palm.
32. PASSION WEEK
Day passed; and passed a second one,
A third—fourth—fifth; and bound he sate
In film of sorrow without moan—
Abandoned, in the stony strait
Of mutineer thrust on wild shore,
Hearing, beyond the roller’s froth,
The last dip of the parting oar.
Alone, for all had left him so;
Though Rolfe, Vine, Derwent—each was loth,
How loth to leave him, or to go
Be first. From Vine he caught new sense
Developed through fate’s pertinence.
Friendly they tarried—blameless went:
Life, avaricious, still demands
Her own, and more; the world is rent
With partings.
But, since all are gone,
Why lingers he, the stricken one?
Why linger where no hope can be?
Ask grief, love ask—fidelity
In dog that by the corse abides
Of shepherd fallen—abides, abides
Though autumn into winter glides,
Till on the mountain all is chill
And snow-bound, and the twain lie still.
How oft through Lent the feet were led
Of this chastised and fasting one
To neutral silence of the dead
In Kedron’s gulf. One morn he sate
Down poring toward it from the gate
Sealed and named Golden. There a tomb,
Erected in time’s recent day,
In block along the threshold lay
Impassable. From Omar’s bloom
Came birds which lit, nor dreamed of harm,
On neighboring stones. His visage calm
Seemed not the one which late showed play
Of passion’s throe; but here divine
No peace; ignition in the mine
Announced is by the rush, the roar:
These end; yet may the coal burn on—
Still slumberous burn beneath the floor
Of pastures where the sheep lie down.
Ere long a cheerful choral strain
He hears; ’tis an Armenian train
Embowered in palms they bear, which (green,
And shifting oft) reveal the mien
Of flamens tall and singers young
In festal robes: a rainbow throng,
Like dolphins off Madeira seen
Which quick the ship and shout dismay.
With the blest anthem, censers sway,
Whose opal vapor, spiral borne,
Blends with the heavens’ own azure Morn
Of Palms; for ’twas Palm Sunday bright,
Though thereof he, oblivious quite,
Knew nothing, nor that here they came
In memory of the green acclaim
Triumphal, and hosanna-roll
Which hailed Him on the ass’s foal.
But unto Clarel that bright view
Into a dusk reminder grew:
He saw the tapers—saw again
The censers, singers, and the wreath
And litter of the bride of death
Pass through the Broken Fountain’s lane;
In treble shrill and bass how deep
The men and boys he heard again
The undetermined contest keep
About the bier—the bier Armenian.
Yet dull, in torpor dim, he knew
The futile omen in review.
Yet three more days, and leadenly
From over Mary’s port and arch,
On Holy Thursday, he the march
Of friars beheld, with litany
Filing beneath his feet, and bent
With crosses craped to sacrament
Down in the glenned Gethsemane.
Yes, Passion Week; the altars cower—
Each shrine a dead dismantled bower.
But when Good Friday dirged her gloom
Ere brake the morning, and each light
Round Calvary faded and the TOMB,
What exhalations met his sight:—
Illusion of grief’s wakeful doom:
The dead walked. There, amid the train,
Wan Nehemiah he saw again—
With charnel beard; and Celio passed
As in a dampened mirror glassed;
Gleamed Mortmain, pallid as wolf-bone
Which bleaches where no man hath gone;
And Nathan in his murdered guise—
Sullen, and Hades in his eyes;
Poor Agar, with such wandering mien
As in her last blank hour was seen.
And each and all kept lonely state,
Yea, man and wife passed separate.
But Ruth—ah, how estranged in face!
He knew her by no earthly grace:
Nor might he reach to her in place.
And languid vapors from them go
Like thaw-fogs curled from dankish snow.
Where, where now He who helpeth us,
The Comforter?—Tell, Erebus!
33. EASTER
BUT ON THE THIRD DAY CHRIST AROSE;
And, in the town He knew, the rite
Commemorative eager goes
Before the hour. Upon the night
Between the week’s last day and first,
No more the Stabat is dispersed
Or Tenebræ. And when the day,
The Easter, falls in calendar
The same to Latin and the array
Of all schismatics from afar—
Armenians, Greeks from many a shore—
Syrians, Copts—profusely pour
The hymns: ’tis like the choric gush
Of torrents Alpine when they rush
To swell the anthem of the spring.
That year was now. Throughout the fane,
Floor, and arcades in double ring
About the gala of THE TOMB,
Blazing with lights, behung with bloom—
What child-like thousands roll the strain,
The hallelujah after pain,
Which in all tongues of Christendom
Still through the ages has rehearsed
That Best, the outcome of the Worst.
Nor blame them who by lavish rite
Thus greet the pale victorious Son,
Since Nature times the same delight,
And rises with the Emerging One;
Her passion-week, her winter mood
She slips, with crape from off the Rood.
In soft rich shadow under dome,
With gems and robes repletely fine,
The priests like birds Brazilian shine:
And moving tapers charm the sight,
Enkindling the curled incense-fume:
A dancing ray, Auroral light.
Burn on the hours, and meet the day.
The morn invites; the suburbs call
The concourse to come forth—this way!
Out from the gate by Stephen’s wall,
They issue, dot the hills, and stray
In bands, like sheep among the rocks;
And the Good Shepherd in the heaven,
To whom the charge of these is given,
The Christ, ah! counts He there His flocks?
But they, at each suburban shrine,
Grateful adore that Friend benign;
Though chapel now and cross divine
Too frequent show neglected; nay,
For charities of early rains
Rim them about with vernal stains,
Forerunners of maturer May,
When those red flowers, which so can please,
(Christ’s-Blood-Drops named—anemones),
Spot Ephraim and the mountain-way.
But heart bereft is unrepaid
Though Thammuz’ spring in Thammuz’ glade
Invite; then how in Joel’s glen?
What if dyed shawl and bodice gay
Make bright the black dell? what if they
In distance clear diminished be
To seeming cherries dropped on pall
Borne graveward under laden tree?
The cheer, so human, might not call
The maiden up; Christ is arisen:
But Ruth, may Ruth so burst the prison?
The rite supreme being ended now,
Their confluence here the nations part:
Homeward the tides of pilgrims flow,
By contrast making the walled town
Like a depopulated mart;
More like some kirk on week-day lone,
On whose void benches broodeth still
The brown light from November hill.
But though the freshet quite be gone—
Sluggish, life’s wonted stream flows on.
34. VIA CRUCIS
Some leading thoroughfares of man
In wood-path, track, or trail began;
Though threading heart of proudest town,
They follow in controlling grade
A hint or dictate, nature’s own,
By man, as by the brute, obeyed.
Within Jerusalem a lane,
Narrow, nor less an artery main
(Though little knoweth it of din),
In part suggests such origin.
The restoration or repair,
Successive through long ages there,
Of city upon city tumbled,
Might scarce divert that thoroughfare,
Whose hill abideth yet unhumbled
Above the valley-side it meets.
Herman Melville- Complete Poems Page 64