Herman Melville- Complete Poems

by Herman Melville

  Then, only then would heaven think to lop

  Such a cedar as the Captain o’ the Splendid’s main-top:

  A belted sea-gentleman; a gallant, off-hand

  Mercutio indifferent in life’s gay command.

  Magnanimous in humor: when the splintering shot fell,

  “Tooth-picks a’plenty, lads; thank ’em with a shell!”

  Sang Larry o’ the Cannakin, smuggler o’ the wine,

  At mess between guns, lad in jovial recline:

  “In Limbo our Jack he would chirrup up a cheer,

  The martinet there find a chaffing mutineer;

  From a thousand fathoms down under hatches o’ your Hades,

  He’d ascend in love-ditty, kissing fingers to your ladies!”

  Never relishing the knave though allowing for the menial,

  Nor overmuch the king, Jack, nor prodigally genial.

  Ashore on liberty, he flashed in escapade,

  Vaulting over life in its levelness of grade,

  Like the dolphin off Africa in rainbow a’sweeping—

  Arch irridescent shot from seas languid sleeping.

  Larking with thy life, if a joy but a toy,

  Heroic in thy levity wert thou, Jack Roy.

  SEA-PIECES

  The Haglets

  BY chapel bare, with walls sea-beat,

  The lichened urns in wilds are lost

  About a carved memorial stone

  That shows, decayed and coral-mossed,

  A form recumbent, swords at feet,

  Trophies at head, and kelp for a winding sheet.

  I invoke thy ghost, neglected fane,

  Washed by the waters’ long lament;

  I adjure the recumbent effigy

  To tell the cenotaph’s intent—

  Reveal why fagotted swords are at feet,

  Why trophies appear and weeds are the winding sheet.

  —––——––—

  By open ports the Admiral sits,

  And shares repose with guns that tell

  Of power that smote the arm’d Plate Fleet

  Whose sinking flag-ship’s colors fell;

  But over the Admiral floats in light

  His squadron’s flag, the red-cross Flag of the White.

  The eddying waters whirl astern,

  The prow, a seedsman, sows the spray;

  With bellying sails and buckling spars

  The black hull leaves a Milky Way:

  Her timbers thrill, her batteries roll,

  She revelling speeds exulting with pennon at pole.

  But ah, for standards captive trailed

  For all their scutcheoned castles’ pride—

  Castilian towers that dominate Spain,

  Naples, and either Ind beside;

  Those haughty towers, armorial ones,

  Rue the salute from the Admiral’s dens of guns.

  Ensigns and arms in trophy brave—

  Braver for many a rent and scar,

  The captor’s naval hall bedeck,

  Spoil that insures an earldom’s star—

  Toledoes great, grand draperies too,

  Spain’s steel and silk, and splendors from Peru.

  But crippled part in splintering fight,

  The vanquished flying the victor’s flags,

  With prize-crews, under convoy-guns,

  Heavy the fleet from Opher drags—

  The Admiral crowding sail ahead,

  Foremost with news who foremost in conflict sped.

  But out from cloistral gallery dim,

  In early night his glance is thrown;

  He marks the vague reserve of heaven,

  He feels the touch of ocean lone;

  Then turns, in frame part undermined,

  Nor notes the shadowing wings that fan behind.

  There, peaked and gray, three haglets fly,

  And follow, follow fast in wake

  Where slides the cabin-lustre shy,

  And sharks from man a glamour take,

  Seething along the line of light

  In lane that endless rules the war-ship’s flight.

  The sea-fowl here whose hearts none know,

  They followed late the flag-ship quelled

  (As now the victor one) and long

  Above her gurgling grave, shrill held

  With screams their wheeling rites—then sped

  Direct in silence where the victor led.

  Now winds less fleet, but fairer, blow,

  A ripple laps the coppered side,

  While phosphor sparks make ocean gleam

  Like camps lit up in triumph wide;

  With lights and tinkling cymbals meet

  Acclaiming seas the advancing conqueror greet.

  But who a flattering tide may trust,

  Or favoring breeze, or aught in end?—

  Careening under startling blasts

  The sheeted towers of sails impend;

  While, gathering bale, behind is bred

  A livid storm-bow, like a rainbow dead.

  At trumpet-call the topmen spring;

  And, urged by after-call in stress,

  Yet other tribes of tars ascend

  The rigging’s howling wilderness;

  But ere yard-ends alert they win,

  Hell rules in heaven with hurricane-fire and din.

  The spars, athwart at spiry height,

  Like quaking Lima’s crosses rock;

  Like bees the clustering sailors cling

  Against the shrouds, or take the shock

  Flat on the swept yard-arms aslant

  Dipped like the wheeling condor’s pinions gaunt.

  A lull! and tongues of languid flame

  Lick every boom and lambent show

  Electric ’gainst each face aloft;

  The herds of clouds with bellowings go:

  The black ship rears—beset—harassed,

  Then plunges far with luminous antlers vast.

  In trim betimes they turn from land,

  Some shivered sails and spars they stow:

  One watch, dismissed, they troll the can,

  While loud the billow thumps the bow—

  Vies with the fist that smites the board

  Obstreperous at each reveller’s jovial word.

  Of royal oak by storms confirmed,

  The tested hull her lineage shows;

  Vainly the plungings whelm her prow—

  She rallies, rears, she sturdier grows;

  Each shot-hole plugged, each storm-sail home,

  With batteries housed she rams the watery dome.

  Dim seen adrift through driving scud,

  The wan moon shows in plight forlorn;

  Then, pinched in visage, fades and fades

  Like to the faces drowned at morn,

  When deeps engulfed the flag-ship’s crew

  And, shrilling round, the inscrutable haglets flew.

  And still they fly, nor now they cry,

  But constant fan a second wake,

  Unflagging pinions ply and ply,

  Abreast their course intent they take;

  Their silence marks a stable mood,

  They patient keep their eager neighborhood.

  Plumed with a smoke, a confluent sea,

  Heaved in a combing pyramid full,

  Spent at its climax, in collapse

  Down headlong thundering stuns the hull:

  The trophy drops; but, reared again,

  Shows Mars’ high-altar and contemns the main.

  Rebuilt it stands, the brag of arms,


  Transferred in site—no thought of where

  The sensitive needle keeps its place.

  And starts, disturbed, a quiverer there;

  The helmsman rubs the clouded glass—

  Peers in, but lets the trembling portent pass.

  Let pass as well his shipmates do

  (Whose dream of power no tremors jar)

  Fears for the fleet convoyed astern:

  “Our flag they fly, they share our star;

  Spain’s galleons great in hull are stout:

  Manned by our men—like us they’ll ride it out.”

  To-night’s the night that ends the week—

  Ends day and week and month and year:

  A four-fold imminent flickering time,

  For now the midnight draws anear:

  Eight bells! and passing-bells they be—

  The Old Year fades, the Old Year dies at sea.

  He launched them well. But shall the New

  Redeem the pledge the Old Year made,

  Or prove a self-asserting heir?

  But healthy hearts few qualms invade:

  By shot-chests grouped in bays ’tween guns

  The gossips chat, the grizzled, sea-beat ones.

  And boyish dreams some graybeards blab:

  “To sea, my lads, we go no more

  Who share the Acapulco prize;

  We’ll all night in, and bang the door;

  Our ingots red shall yield us bliss:

  Lads, golden years begin to-night with this!”

  Released from deck, yet waiting call,

  Glazed caps and coats baptized in storm,

  A watch of Laced Sleeves round the board

  Draw near in heart to keep them warm:

  “Sweethearts and wives!” clink, clink, they meet,

  And, quaffing, dip in wine their beards of sleet.

  “Ay, let the star-light stay withdrawn,

  So here her hearth-light memory fling,

  So in this wine-light cheer be born,

  And honor’s fellowship weld our ring—

  Honor! our Admiral’s aim foretold:

  A tomb or a trophy, and lo, ’tis a trophy and gold!”

  But he, a unit, sole in rank,

  Apart needs keep his lonely state,

  The sentry at his guarded door

  Mute as by vault the sculptured Fate;

  Belted he sits in drowsy light,

  And, hatted, nods—the Admiral of the White.

  He dozes, aged with watches passed—

  Years, years of pacing to and fro;

  He dozes, nor attends the stir

  In bullioned standards rustling low,

  Nor minds the blades whose secret thrill

  Perverts overhead the magnet’s Polar will;—

  Less heeds the shadowing three that ply

  And follow, follow fast in wake,

  Untiring wing and lidless eye—

  Abreast their course intent they take;

  Or sigh or sing, they hold for good

  The unvarying flight and fixed inveterate mood.

  In dream at last his dozings merge,

  In dream he reaps his victory’s fruit:

  The Flags-o’-the-Blue, the Flags-o’-the-Red,

  Dipped flags of his country’s fleets salute

  His Flag-o’-the-White in harbor proud—

  But why should it blench? Why turn to a painted shroud?

  The hungry seas they hound the hull,

  The sharks they dog the haglets’ flight;

  With one consent the winds, the waves

  In hunt with fins and wings unite,

  While drear the harps in cordage sound

  Remindful wails for old Armadas drowned.

  Ha—yonder! are they Northern Lights?

  Or signals flashed to warn or ward?

  Yea, signals lanced in breakers high;

  But doom on warning follows hard:

  While yet they veer in hope to shun,

  They strike! and thumps of hull and heart are one.

  But beating hearts a drum-beat calls,

  And prompt the men to quarters go;

  Discipline, curbing nature, rules—

  Heroic makes who duty know:

  They execute the trump’s command,

  Or in peremptory places wait and stand.

  Yet cast about in blind amaze—

  As through their watery shroud they peer:

  “We tacked from land: then how betrayed?

  Have currents swerved us—snared us here?”

  None heed the blades that clash in place

  Under lamps dashed down that lit the magnet’s case.

  Ah, what may live, who mighty swim,

  Or boat-crew reach that shore forbid,

  Or cable span? Must victors drown—

  Perish, even as the vanquished did?

  Man keeps from man the stifled moan;

  They shouldering stand, yet each in heart how lone.

  Some heaven invoke; but rings of reefs

  Prayer and despair alike deride

  In dance of breakers forked or peaked,

  Pale maniacs of the maddened tide;

  While, strenuous yet some end to earn,

  The haglets spin, though now no more astern.

  Like shuttles hurrying in the looms

  Aloft through rigging frayed they ply—

  Cross and recross—weave and inweave,

  Then lock the web with clinching cry

  Over the seas on seas that clasp

  The weltering wreck where gurgling ends the gasp.

  Ah, for the Plate-Fleet trophy now,

  The victor’s voucher, flags and arms;

  Never they’ll hang in Abbey old

  And take Time’s dust with holier palms;

  Nor less content, in liquid night,

  Their captor sleeps—the Admiral of the White.

  Imbedded deep with shells

  And drifted treasure deep,

  Forever he sinks deeper in

  Unfathomable sleep—

  His cannon round him thrown,

  His sailors at his feet,

  The wizard sea enchanting them

  Where never haglets beat.

  On nights when meteors play,

  And light the breakers’ dance,

  The Oreads from the caves

  With silvery elves advance;

  And up from ocean stream,

  And down from heaven far,

  The rays that blend in dream

  The abysm and the star.

  The Æolian Harp At the Surf Inn

  LIST the harp in window wailing

  Stirred by fitful gales from sea:

  Shrieking up in mad crescendo—

  Dying down in plaintive key!

  Listen: Less a strain ideal

  Than Ariel’s rendering of the Real.

  What that Real is, let hint

  A picture stamped in memory’s mint.—

  Braced well up, with beams aslant,

  Betwixt the continents sails the Phocion

  For Baltimore bound from Alicant.

  Blue breezy skies white fleeces fleck

  Over the chill blue white-capped ocean:

  From yard-arm comes—“Wreck ho, a wreck!”

  Dismasted and adrift,

  Long time a thing forsaken;

  Overwashed by every wave

  Like the slumbering kraken;

  Heedless if the billow roar,

  Oblivious of the lull,

  Leagues and leagues from shoal
or shore,

  It swims—a levelled hull:

  Bulwarks gone—a shaven wreck,

  Nameless, and a grass-green deck.

  A lumberman: perchance, in hold

  Prostrate pines with hemlocks rolled.

  It has drifted, waterlogged,

  Till by trailing weeds beclogged:

  Drifted, drifted, day by day,

  Pilotless on pathless way.

  It has drifted till each plank

  Is oozy as the oyster-bank:

  Drifted, drifted, night by night,

  Craft that never shows a light;

  Nor ever, to prevent worse knell,

  Tolls in fog the warning bell.

  From collision never shrinking,

  Drive what may through darksome smother;

  Saturate, but never sinking,

  Fatal only to the other!

  Deadlier than the sunken reef

  Since still the snare it shifteth,

  Torpid in dumb ambuscade

  Waylayingly it drifteth.

  O the sailors—O the sails!

  O the lost crews never heard of!

  Well the harp of Ariel wails

  Thoughts that tongue can tell no word of!

  To the Master of the Meteor

  LONESOME on earth’s loneliest deep,

  Sailor! who dost thy vigil keep—

  Off the Cape of Storms dost musing sweep

  Over monstrous waves that curl and comb;

  Of thee we think when here from brink

  We blow the mead in bubbling foam.

  Of thee we think, in a ring we link;

  To the shearer of ocean’s fleece we drink,

  And the Meteor rolling home.

  Far Off-Shore

  LOOK, the raft, a signal flying,

  Thin—a shred;

  None upon the lashed spars lying,

  Quick or dead.

  Cries the sea-fowl, hovering over,

  “Crew, the crew?”

  And the billow, reckless rover,

  Sweeps anew!

  The Man-of-War Hawk

  YON black man-of-war hawk that wheels in the light