Herman Melville- Complete Poems

by Herman Melville

  O’er the black ship’s white sky-s’l, sunned cloud to the sight,

  Have we low-flyers wings to ascend to his height?

  No arrow can reach him; nor thought can attain

  To the placid supreme in the sweep of his reign.

  The Figure-Head

  THE Charles-and-Emma seaward sped,

  (Named from the carven pair at prow)

  He so smart, and a curly head,

  She tricked forth as a bride knows how:

  Pretty stem for the port, I trow!

  But iron-rust and alum-spray

  And chafing gear, and sun and dew

  Vexed this lad and lassie gay,

  Tears in their eyes, salt tears nor few;

  And the hug relaxed with the failing glue.

  But came in end a dismal night

  With creaking beams and ribs that groan,

  A black lee-shore and waters white:

  Dropped on the reef, the pair lie prone:

  O, the breakers dance, but the winds they moan!

  The Good Craft Snow-Bird

  STRENUOUS need that head-wind be

  From purposed voyage that drives at last

  The ship sharp-braced and dogged still

  Beating up against the blast.

  Brigs that figs for market gather,

  Homeward-bound upon the stretch,

  Encounter oft this uglier weather,

  Yet in end their port they fetch.

  Mark yon craft from sunny Smyrna

  Glazed with ice in Boston Bay;

  Out they toss the fig-drums cheerly,

  Livelier for the frosty ray.

  What if sleet off-shore assailed her,

  What though ice yet plate her yards:

  In wintry port not less she renders

  Summer’s gift with warm regards!

  And, look, the underwriters’ man,

  Timely, when the stevedore’s done,

  Puts on his specs to pry and scan,

  And sets her down—A, No. 1.

  Bravo, master! brava, brig!

  For slanting snows out of the west

  Never the Snow-Bird cares one fig;

  And foul winds steady her, though a pest.

  Old Counsel

  Of the young Master

  Of a wrecked California clipper

  COME out of the Golden Gate,

  Go round the Horn with streamers,

  Carry royals early and late;

  But, brother, be not over-elate—

  All hands save ship! has startled dreamers.

  The Tuft of Kelp

  ALL dripping in tangles green,

  Cast up by a lonely sea,

  If purer for that, O Weed,

  Bitterer, too, are ye?

  The Maldive Shark

  ABOUT the Shark, phlegmatical one,

  Pale sot of the Maldive sea,

  The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim,

  How alert in attendance be.

  From his saw-pit of mouth, from his charnel of maw

  They have nothing of harm to dread,

  But liquidly glide on his ghastly flank

  Or before his Gorgonian head;

  Or lurk in the port of serrated teeth

  In white triple tiers of glittering gates,

  And there find a haven when peril’s abroad,

  An asylum in jaws of the Fates!

  They are friends; and friendly they guide him to prey,

  Yet never partake of the treat—

  Eyes and brains to the dotard lethargic and dull,

  Pale ravener of horrible meat.

  To Ned

  WHERE is the world we roved, Ned Bunn?

  Hollows thereof lay rich in shade

  By voyagers old inviolate thrown

  Ere Paul Pry cruised with Pelf and Trade.

  To us old lads some thoughts come home

  Who roamed a world young lads no more shall roam.

  Nor less the satiate year impends

  When, wearying of routine-resorts,

  The pleasure-hunter shall break loose,

  Ned, for our Pantheistic ports:—

  Marquesas and glenned isles that be

  Authentic Edens in a Pagan sea.

  The charm of scenes untried shall lure,

  And, Ned, a legend urge the flight—

  The Typee-truants under stars

  Unknown to Shakespere’s Midsummer-Night;

  And man, if lost to Saturn’s Age,

  Yet feeling life no Syrian pilgrimage.

  But, tell, shall he the tourist find

  Our isles the same in violet-glow

  Enamoring us what years and years—

  Ah, Ned, what years and years ago!

  Well, Adam advances, smart in pace,

  But scarce by violets that advance you trace.

  But we, in anchor-watches calm,

  The Indian Psyche’s languor won,

  And, musing, breathed primeval balm

  From Edens ere yet over-run;

  Marvelling mild if mortal twice,

  Here and hereafter, touch a Paradise.

  Crossing the Tropics

  (From The Saya-y-Manto)

  WHILE now the Pole Star sinks from sight

  The Southern Cross it climbs the sky;

  But losing thee, my love, my light,

  O bride but for one bridal night,

  The loss no rising joys supply.

  Love, love, the Trade-Winds urge abaft,

  And thee, from thee, they steadfast waft.

  By day the blue-and-silver sea

  And chime of waters blandly fanned—

  Nor these, nor Gama’s stars to me

  May yield delight since still for thee

  I long as Gama longed for land.

  I yearn, I yearn, reverting turn,

  My heart it streams in wake astern.

  When, cut by slanting sleet, we swoop

  Where raves the world’s inverted year,

  If roses all your porch shall loop,

  Not less your heart for me will droop

  Doubling the world’s last outpost drear.

  O love, O love, these oceans vast:

  Love, love, it is as death were past!

  The Berg

  (A Dream)

  I SAW a Ship of martial build

  (Her standards set, her brave apparel on)

  Directed as by madness mere

  Against a stolid Iceberg steer,

  Nor budge it, though the infatuate Ship went down.

  The impact made huge ice-cubes fall

  Sullen, in tons that crashed the deck;

  But that one avalanche was all—

  No other movement save the foundering wreck.

  Along the spurs of ridges pale

  Not any slenderest shaft and frail,

  A prism over glass-green gorges lone,

  Toppled; nor lace of traceries fine,

  Nor pendant drops in grot or mine

  Were jarred, when the stunned Ship went down.

  Nor sole the gulls in cloud that wheeled

  Circling one snow-flanked peak afar,

  But nearer fowl the floes that skimmed

  And crystal beaches, felt no jar.

  No thrill transmitted stirred the lock

  Of jack-straw needle-ice at base;


  Towers undermined by waves—the block

  Atilt impending—kept their place.

  Seals, dozing sleek on sliddery ledges

  Slipt never, when by loftier edges,

  Through very inertia overthrown,

  The impetuous Ship in bafflement went down.

  Hard Berg (methought) so cold, so vast,

  With mortal damps self-overcast;

  Exhaling still thy dankish breath—

  Adrift dissolving, bound for death;

  Though lumpish thou, a lumbering one—

  A lumbering lubbard loitering slow,

  Impingers rue thee and go down,

  Sounding thy precipice below,

  Nor stir the slimy slug that sprawls

  Along thy dense stolidity of walls.

  The Enviable Isles

  (From Rammon)

  THROUGH storms you reach them and from storms are free.

  Afar descried, the foremost drear in hue,

  But, nearer, green; and, on the marge, the sea

  Makes thunder low and mist of rainbowed dew.

  But, inland, where the sleep that folds the hills

  A dreamier sleep, the trance of God, instills—

  On uplands hazed, in wandering airs aswoon,

  Slow-swaying palms salute love’s cypress tree

  Adown in vale where pebbly runlets croon

  A song to lull all sorrow and all glee.

  Sweet-fern and moss in many a glade are here,

  Where, strown in flocks, what cheek-flushed myriads lie

  Dimpling in dream—unconscious slumberers mere,

  While billows endless round the beaches die.

  PEBBLES

  I

  THOUGH the Clerk of the Weather insist,

  And lay down the weather-law,

  Pintado and gannet they wist

  That the winds blow whither they list

  In tempest or flaw.

  II

  OLD are the creeds, but stale the schools

  Revamped as the mode may veer.

  But Orm from the schools to the beaches strays,

  And, finding a Conch hoar with time, he delays

  And reverent lifts it to ear.

  That Voice, pitched in far monotone,

  Shall it swerve? shall it deviate ever?

  The Seas have inspired it, and Truth—

  Truth, varying from sameness never.

  III

  IN hollows of the liquid hills

  Where the long Blue Ridges run,

  The flattery of no echo thrills,

  For echo the seas have none;

  Nor aught that gives man back man’s strain—

  The hope of his heart, the dream in his brain.

  IV

  ON ocean where the embattled fleets repair,

  Man, suffering inflictor, sails on sufferance there.

  V

  IMPLACABLE I, the old implacable Sea:

  Implacable most when most I smile serene—

  Pleased, not appeased, by myriad wrecks in me.

  VI

  CURLED in the comb of yon billow Andean,

  Is it the Dragon’s heaven-challenging crest?

  Elemental mad ramping of ravening waters—

  Yet Christ on the Mount, and the dove in her nest!

  VII

  HEALED of my hurt, I laud the inhuman Sea—

  Yea, bless the Angels Four that there convene;

  For healed I am even by their pitiless breath

  Distilled in wholesome dew named rosmarine.

  TIMOLEON ETC.

  TO

  MY COUNTRYMAN

  ELIHU VEDDER

  CONTENTS

  Timoleon

  After the Pleasure Party

  The Night-March

  The Ravaged Villa

  The Margrave’s Birth Night

  Magian Wine

  The Garden of Metrodorus

  The New Zealot to the Sun

  The Weaver

  Lamia’s Song

  In a Garret

  Monody

  Lone Founts

  The Bench of Boors

  The Enthusiast

  Art

  Buddha

  C——––’s Lament

  Shelley’s Vision

  Fragments of a Lost Gnostic Poem of the 12th Century

  The Marchioness of Brinvilliers

  The Age of the Antonines

  Herba Santa

  FRUIT OF TRAVEL LONG AGO

  Venice

  In a Bye-Canal

  Pisa’s Leaning Tower

  In a Church of Padua

  Milan Cathedral

  Pausilippo

  The Attic Landscape

  The Same

  The Parthenon

  Greek Masonry

  Greek Architecture

  Off Cape Colonna

  The Archipelago

  Syra

  Disinterment of the Hermes

  The Apparition

  In the Desert

  The Great Pyramid

  L’ENVOY

  The Return of the Sire de Nesle

  Timoleon

  (394 B.C.)

  I

  IF more than once, as annals tell,

  Through blood without compunction spilt,

  An egotist arch rule has snatched,

  And stamped the seizure with his sabre’s hilt,

  And, legalised by lawyers, stood;

  Shall the good heart whose patriot fire

  Leaps to a deed of startling note,

  Do it, then flinch? Shall good in weak expire?

  Needs goodness lack the evil grit

  That stares down censorship and ban,

  And dumfounds saintlier ones with this—

  God’s will’s avouched in each successful man?

  Or, put it, where dread stress inspires

  A virtue beyond man’s standard rate,

  Seems virtue there a strain forbid—

  Transcendence such as shares transgression’s fate?

  If so, and wan eclipse ensue,

  Yet glory await emergence won,

  Is that high Providence, or Chance?

  And proved it which with thee, Timoleon?

  O, crowned with laurel twined with thorn,

  Not rash thy life’s cross-tide I stem,

  But reck the problem rolled in pang

  And reach and dare to touch thy garment’s hem.

  II

  When Argos and Cleone strove

  Against free Corinth’s claim or right,

  Two brothers battled for her well:

  A footman one, and one a mounted knight.

  Apart in place, each braved the brunt

  Till the rash cavalryman, alone,

  Was wrecked against the enemy’s files,

  His bayard crippled, and he maimed and thrown.

  Timoleon, at Timophanes’ need,

  Makes for the rescue through the fray,

  Covers him with his shield, and takes

  The darts and furious odds and fights at bay;

  Till, wrought to pallor of passion dumb,

  Stark terrors of death around he throws,

  Warding his brother from the field

  Spite failing friends dispersed and rallying foes.

  Here might he rest, in claim rest here,

  Rest, and a Phidian form remain;

  But life halts never, life must on
,

  And take with term prolonged some scar or stain.

  Yes, life must on. And latent germs

  Time’s seasons wake in mead and man;

  And brothers, playfellows in youth,

  Develop into variance wide in span.

  III

  Timophanes was his mother’s pride—

  Her pride, her pet, even all to her

  Who slackly on Timoleon looked.

  Scarce he (she mused) may proud affection stir.

  He saved my darling, gossips tell:

  If so, ’twas service, yea, and fair;

  But instinct ruled, and duty bade,

  In service such, a henchman e’en might share.

  When boys they were I helped the bent;

  I made the junior feel his place,

  Subserve the senior, love him, too;

  And sooth he does, and that’s his saving grace.

  But me the meek one never can serve,

  Not he, he lacks the quality keen

  To make the mother through the son

  An envied dame of power, a social queen.

  But thou, my first-born, thou art I

  In sex translated; joyed, I scan

  My features, mine, expressed in thee;

  Thou art what I would be were I a man.

  My brave Timophanes, ’tis thou

  Who yet the world’s fore-front shalt win,

  For thine the urgent resolute way,