Herman Melville- Complete Poems

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Herman Melville- Complete Poems Page 71

by Herman Melville


  Sybilline inklings blending rave,

  Then lap the verge with sighs.

  Delirious here the oracles swim

  Ambiguous in the beading hymn.

  The Garden of Metrodorus

  THE Athenians mark the moss-grown gate

  And hedge untrimmed that hides the haven green:

  And who keeps here his quiet state?

  And shares he sad or happy fate

  Where never foot-path to the gate is seen?

  Here none come forth, here none go in,

  Here silence strange, and dumb seclusion dwell:

  Content from loneness who may win?

  And is this stillness peace or sin

  Which noteless thus apart can keep its dell?

  The New Zealot to the Sun

  PERSIAN, you rise

  Aflame from climes of sacrifice

  Where adulators sue,

  And prostrate man, with brow abased,

  Adheres to rites whose tenor traced

  All worship hitherto.

  Arch type of sway,

  Meetly your overruling ray

  You fling from Asia’s plain,

  Whence flashed the javelins abroad

  Of many a wild incursive horde

  Led by some shepherd Cain.

  Mid terrors dinned

  Gods too came conquerors from your Ind,

  The brood of Brahma throve;

  They came like to the scythèd car,

  Westward they rolled their empire far,

  Of night their purple wove.

  Chymist, you breed

  In orient climes each sorcerous weed

  That energises dream—

  Transmitted, spread in myths and creeds,

  Houris and hells, delirious screeds—

  And Calvin’s last extreme.

  What though your light

  In time’s first dawn compelled the flight

  Of Chaos’ startled clan,

  Shall never all your darted spears

  Disperse worse Anarchs, frauds and fears,

  Sprung from these weeds to man?

  But Science yet

  An effluence ampler shall beget,

  And power beyond your play—

  Shall quell the shades you fail to rout,

  Yea, searching every secret out,

  Elucidate your ray.

  The Weaver

  FOR years, within a mud-built room

  For Arva’s shrine he weaves the Shawl,

  Lone wight, and at a lonely loom,

  His busy shadow on the wall.

  The face is pinched, the form is bent,

  No pastime knows he nor the wine,

  Recluse he lives and abstinent

  Who weaves for Arva’s shrine.

  Lamia’s Song

  DESCEND, descend!

  Pleasant the downward way—

  From your lonely Alp

  With the wintry scalp

  To our myrtles in valleys of May.

  Wend, then, wend:

  Mountaineer, descend!

  And more than a wreath shall repay.

  Come, ah, come!

  With the cataracts come,

  That hymn as they roam—

  How pleasant the downward way!

  In a Garret

  GEMS and jewels let them heap—

  Wax sumptuous as the Sophi:

  For me, to grapple from Art’s deep

  One dripping trophy!

  Monody

  TO have known him, to have loved him,

  After loneness long;

  And then to be estranged in life,

  And neither in the wrong;

  And now for death to set his seal—

  Ease me, a little ease, my song!

  By wintry hills his hermit-mound

  The sheeted snow-drifts drape,

  And houseless there the snow-bird flits

  Beneath the fir-tree’s crape:

  Glazed now with ice the cloistral vine

  That hid the shyest grape.

  Lone Founts

  THOUGH fast youth’s glorious fable flies,

  View not the world with worldlings’ eyes;

  Nor turn with weather of the time.

  Foreclose the coming of surprise:

  Stand where Posterity shall stand;

  Stand where the Ancients stood before,

  And, dipping in lone founts thy hand,

  Drink of the never-varying lore:

  Wise once, and wise thence evermore.

  The Bench of Boors

  IN bed I muse on Teniers’ boors,

  Embrowned and beery losels all:

  A wakeful brain

  Elaborates pain:

  Within low doors the slugs of boors

  Laze and yawn, and doze again.

  In dreams they doze, the drowsy boors,

  Their hazy hovel warm and small:

  Thought’s ampler bound

  But chill is found:

  Within low doors the basking boors

  Snugly hug the ember-mound.

  Sleepless, I see the slumberous boors

  Their blurred eyes blink, their eyelids fall:

  Thought’s eager sight

  Aches—overbright!

  Within low doors the boozy boors

  Cat-naps take in pipe-bowl light.

  The Enthusiast

  “Though He slay me

  yet will I trust in Him.”

  SHALL hearts that beat no base retreat

  In youth’s magnanimous years—

  Ignoble hold it if discreet

  When interest tames to fears;

  Shall spirits that worship light

  Perfidious deem its sacred glow,

  Recant, and trudge where worldlings go,

  Conform, and own them right?

  Shall Time with creeping influence cold

  Unnerve and cow? the heart

  Pine for the heartless ones enrolled

  With palterers of the mart?

  Shall Faith abjure her skies,

  Or pale probation blench her down

  To shrink from Truth so still, so lone

  Mid loud gregarious lies?

  Each burning boat in Cæsar’s rear

  Flames—No return through me!

  So put the torch to ties though dear,

  If ties but tempters be.

  Nor cringe if come the night:

  Walk through the cloud to meet the pall,

  Though light forsake thee, never fall

  From fealty to light.

  Art

  IN placid hours well pleased we dream

  Of many a brave unbodied scheme.

  But form to lend, pulsed life create,

  What unlike things must meet and mate:

  A flame to melt—a wind to freeze;

  Sad patience—joyous energies;

  Humility—yet pride and scorn;

  Instinct and study; love and hate;

  Audacity—reverence. These must mate,

  And fuse with Jacob’s mystic heart,

  To wrestle with the angel—Art.

  Buddha

  “For what is your life? It is

  even a vapor that appeareth for ar />
  little time and then vanisheth away.”

  SWOONING swim to less and less,

  Aspirant to nothingness!

  Sobs of the worlds, and dole of kinds

  That dumb endurers be—

  Nirvana! absorb us in your skies,

  Annul us into Thee.

  C——’s Lament

  HOW lovely was the light of heaven,

  What angels leaned from out the sky

  In years when youth was more than wine

  And man and nature seemed divine

  Ere yet I felt that youth must die.

  Ere yet I felt that youth must die

  How insubstantial looked the earth,

  Aladdin-land! in each advance,

  Or here or there, a new romance;

  I never dreamed would come a dearth.

  And nothing then but had its worth,

  Even pain. Yes, pleasure still and pain

  In quick reaction made of life

  A lovers’ quarrel, happy strife

  In youth that never comes again.

  But will youth never come again?

  Even to his grave-bed has he gone,

  And left me lone, to wake by night

  With heavy heart that erst was light?

  O, lay it at his head—a stone!

  Shelley’s Vision

  WANDERING late by morning seas

  When my heart with pain was low—

  Hate the censor pelted me—

  Deject I saw my shadow go.

  In elf-caprice of bitter tone

  I too would pelt the pelted one:

  At my shadow I cast a stone.

  When lo, upon that sun-lit ground

  I saw the quivering phantom take

  The likeness of Saint Stephen crowned:

  Then did self-reverence awake.

  Fragments of a Lost Gnostic

  Poem of the 12th Century

  * * * *

  FOUND a family, build a state,

  The pledged event is still the same:

  Matter in end will never abate

  His ancient brutal claim.

  * * * *

  Indolence is heaven’s ally here,

  And energy the child of hell:

  The Good Man pouring from his pitcher clear

  But brims the poisoned well.

  The Marchioness of Brinvilliers

  HE toned the sprightly beam of morning

  With twilight meek of tender eve,

  Brightness interfused with softness,

  Light and shade did weave:

  And gave to candor equal place

  With mystery starred in open skies;

  And, floating all in sweetness, made

  Her fathomless mild eyes.

  The Age of the Antonines

  WHILE faith forecasts Millennial years

  Spite Europe’s embattled lines,

  Back to the Past one glance be cast—

  The Age of the Antonines!

  O summit of fate, O zenith of time

  When a pagan gentleman reigned,

  And the olive was nailed to the inn of the world

  Nor the peace of the just was feigned.

  A halcyon Age, afar it shines,

  Solstice of Man and the Antonines.

  Hymns to the nations’ friendly gods

  Went up from the fellowly shrines,

  No demagogue beat the pulpit-drum

  In the Age of the Antonines!

  The sting was not dreamed to be taken from death,

  No Paradise pledged or sought,

  But they reasoned of fate at the flowing feast

  Nor stifled the fluent thought.

  We sham, we shuffle while faith declines—

  They were frank in the Age of the Antonines.

  Orders and ranks they kept degree,

  Few felt how the parvenu pines,

  No lawmaker took the lawless one’s fee

  In the Age of the Antonines!

  Under law made will the world reposed

  And the ruler’s right confessed,

  For the heavens elected the Emperor then,

  The foremost of men the best.

  Ah, might we read in America’s signs

  The Age restored of the Antonines.

  Herba Santa

  I

  AFTER long wars when comes release

  Not olive wands proclaiming peace

  An import dearer share

  Than stems of Herba Santa hazed

  In autumn’s Indian air.

  Of moods they breathe that care disarm,

  They pledge us lenitive and calm.

  II

  Shall code or creed a lure afford

  To win all selves to Love’s accord?

  When Love ordained a supper divine

  For the wide world of man,

  What bickerings o’er his gracious wine!

  Then strange new feuds began.

  Effectual more, in lowlier way,

  Pacific Herb, thy sensuous plea

  The bristling clans of Adam sway

  At least to fellowship in thee!

  Before thine altar tribal flags are furled,

  Fain wouldst thou make one hearthstone of the world.

  III

  To scythe, to sceptre, pen and hod—

  Yea, sodden laborers dumb;

  To brains overplied, to feet that plod,

  In solace of the Truce of God

  The Calumet has come!

  IV

  Ah for the world ere Raleigh’s find

  Never that knew this suasive balm

  That helps when Gilead’s fails to heal,

  Helps by an interserted charm.

  Insinuous, thou, that through the nerve

  Windest the soul, and so canst win

  Some from repinings, some from sin,

  The Church’s aim thou dost subserve.

  The ruffled fag foredone with care,

  And brooding, Gold would ease this pain:

  Him soothest thou, and smoothest down

  Till some content return again.

  Even ruffians feel thy influence breed

  Saint Martin’s summer in the mind,

  They feel this last evangel plead,

  As did the first, apart from creed,

  Be peaceful, man—be kind!

  V

  Rejected once on higher plain,

  O Love supreme, to come again

  Can this be thine?

  Again to come, and win us too

  In likeness of a weed

  That as a god didst vainly woo,

  As man more vainly bleed?

  VI

  Forbear, my soul! and in thine Eastern chamber

  Rehearse the dream that brings the long release:

  Through jasmine sweet and talismanic amber

  Inhaling Herba Santa in the passive Pipe of Peace.

  FRUIT OF TRAVEL LONG AGO

  Venice

  WITH Pantheist energy of will

  The little craftsman of the Coral Sea

  Strenuous in the blue abyss,

  Up-builds his marvellous gallery

  And long arcade,

  Erections freaked with many a fringe

  Of marble garlandry,

  Evincing what a worm can do.

  Laborious in a shallower
wave,

  Advanced in kindred art,

  A prouder agent proved Pan’s might

  When Venice rose in reefs of palaces.

  In a Bye-Canal

  A SWOON of noon, a trance of tide,

  The hushed siesta brooding wide

  Like calms far off Peru;

  No floating wayfarer in sight,

  Dumb noon, and haunted like the night

  When Jael the wiled one slew.

  A languid impulse from the oar

  Plied by my indolent gondolier

  Tinkles against a palace hoar,

  And, hark, response I hear!

  A lattice clicks; and, lo, I see,

  Between the slats, mute summoning me,

  What loveliest eyes of scintillation,

  What basilisk glance of conjuration!

  Fronted I have, part taken the span

  Of portents in nature and peril in man.

  I have swum—I have been

  ’Twixt the whale’s black flukes and the white shark’s fin;

  The enemy’s desert have wandered in,

  And there have turned, have turned and scanned,

  Following me how noiselessly,

  Envy and Slander, lepers hand in hand.

  All this. But at the latticed eye—

  “Hey! Gondolier, you sleep, my man;

 

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