Herman Melville- Complete Poems

by Herman Melville

  Now the night it is starry

  And lavishly go

  In a largess of music

  The bells through the snow.

  Now burn the decanters

  Like turrets that rise

  All garnet in sunset

  Of orient skies.

  O, snugged in the Valley

  A homestead of hearts!

  Love flies like a shuttle,

  And knits while it darts.

  Brown brothers, fair sisters,

  Bright cousins and all

  Keeping Christmas at table,

  The large and the small.

  But a kinswoman glideth,

  Infantile in grace,

  Sits down and is silent—

  Medallion in place!

  O, the hearth is like ruby,

  The curtains they glow;

  But she who sits sadly

  Her story we know:

  The blossom of orange

  Turned cypress so soon!

  Child-bride of the May-time,

  Child-widow in June!

  Snow-white is her raiment;

  And sorrow so mild

  An elf-sorrow seemeth,

  As she an elf-child.

  In patience she sitteth;

  Though cometh no balm,

  She floats, holy lily,

  On waters of calm.

  Come pass the decanter!

  Our hearts let us cheer,

  Yea, wish Merry Christmas—

  But let her not hear!

  Iris

  (1865)

  WHEN Sherman’s March was over

  And June was green and bright,

  She came among our mountains,

  A freak of new delight;

  Provokingly our banner

  Salutes with Dixie’s strain,—

  Little rebel from Savannah,

  Three colonels in her train.

  Three bearded Puritan colonels:

  But O her eyes, her mouth—

  Magnolias in their languor

  And sorcery of the South.

  High-handed rule of beauty,

  Are wars for man but vain?

  Behold, three disenslavers

  Themselves embrace a chain!

  But, loveliest invader,

  Out of Dixie did ye rove

  By sallies of your raillery

  To rally us, or move?

  For under all your merriment

  There lurked a minor tone;

  And of havoc we had tidings

  And a roof-tree overthrown.

  Ah, nurtured in the trial—

  And ripened by the storm,

  Was your gaiety your courage,

  And levity its form?

  O’er your future’s darkling waters,

  O’er your past, a frozen tide,

  Like the petrel would you skim it,

  Like the glancing skater glide?

  * * * *

  But the ravisher has won her

  Who the wooers three did slight;

  To his fastness he has borne her

  By the trail that leads through night.

  With Peace she came, the rainbow,

  And like a Bow did pass,

  The balsam-trees exhaling,

  And tear-drops in the grass.

  How laughed the leafage over

  Her pranks in woodland scene:

  Hast left us for the revel

  Deep in Paradise the green?

  In truth we will believe it

  Under pines that sigh a balm,

  Though o’er thy stone be trailing

  Cypress-moss that drapes the palm.

  Under the Ground

  BETWEEN a garden and old tomb

  Disused, a foot-path threads the clover;

  And there I met the gardener’s boy

  Bearing some dewy chaplets over.

  I marvelled, for I just had passed

  The charnel vault and shunned its gloom:

  “Stay, whither wend you, laden thus?

  Roses! you would not these inhume?”

  “Yea, for against the bridal hour

  My Master fain would keep their bloom;

  A charm in the dank o’ the vault there is,

  Yea, we the rose entomb.”

  PARTHENOPE

  CONTENTS

  House of the Tragic Poet

  Preface

  To M. de Grandvin

  At the Hostelry

  To Major John Gentian

  An Afternoon in Naples in the Time of Bomba

  PARTHENOPE

  At the Hostelry

  and

  An Afternoon in Naples in the Time of Bomba

  THE PRIOR Piece being an attempt to give suitable literary method and form to the erratic wit, intelligence, invention, and other gifts of the Marquis de Grandvin, a cosmopolitan and man of society no stranger to some fortunate Americans.

  The latter Piece liberally rendered from the desultory social narrative and song of Jack Gentian, a cherished lover and disciple of the aforesaid genial Marquis.

  The whole being divided into parts and expository headings supplied thereto.

  House of the Tragic Poet

  UPON ENTERING the vestibule of one of the disinterred houses of Pompeii the visitor starts at a large black dog, his chain attached to a spiked collar, in act apparently of fiercely springing upon him. It is a life-like mosaic worked into the pavement. Under it appear the words

  CAVE CANEM.

  To moderns this abode is known as “The House of the Tragic Poet”; a hypothetical name bestowed by the antiquarians, and, probably, because of the gravely dramatic character of certain frescoes on the walls within. But do these pictures justify the name? Originally, this abode was doubtless one of the most elegant in that ancient town. But in no age and nowhere have poets as a class luxuriated in sumptuous lodgement. Moreover, a poet, Pagan or Christian, even the most tragical of his tribe, by nature inclines, in things social, to all the amenities. And would a lover of the social amenities be guilty of so inhospitable a discourtesy as to set Cave Canem in his door-way?

  No. I am disposed to think that this Pompeiian mansion, instead of being the residence of a poet was the house of some well-to-do publisher; who in the device of the dog and motto, was but intent upon scaring away from his premises the importunate nuisance of the literary tyro—with his unsaleable wares. And a very shrewd fellow was that publisher, well knowing the timid and nervous soul of the tyro, and more particularly his trepidation in act of crossing a publisher’s threshold for the first time, and wisely inferring that an abrupt encounter there with a fierce black dog, even though a sham dog, ferociously straining at him to the extremity of his chain, would so upset the tyro’s feeble nervous system, that incontinently he would take to his heels. Why a publisher should have a well-grounded aversion to the tyro, is evident enough, but not equally plain, at least to everybody, is the reason for the poetical tyro’s fantastic terror as to the publisher, even when the latter refrains from adopting his Pompeian brother’s ingenious device.

  But consider. Without the afflatus it is in vain to undertake poetry. The afflatus is simply intoxication, more or less. The poem completed, the debauch comes to an end; and the bard’s Blue Monday begins. The nerves of the poet are in a shattered condition. And it is in this debilitated state, that in natural sequence to composition the thought of publication comes up, a thought formidable in his dire fractedness. The shattered tyro is in the predicament of the rural actor who even previous to facing the foot-light is struck with stage fright. Th
e Public, to whom the Publisher is the immediate pilot, looms ahead like an unknown island at the ends of the earth to the navigator in darkness seeking a hospitable harbor. Who inhabits yon shore? Best stand boldly in for it? Ah, the temerarious Captain Cook was cooked and served up in his own cocked hat at a clam-bake of the tattooed savages!

  Alas, I am merry enough here, but it is the grim merriment of the man who knows how it is himself. Yes, such, as I have attempted to describe, such or similar was the panic that set in upon me, when, in mature life as I am, I, after completing the transcribing and editing of the Pieces contained in this volume, whereof while assuming the responsibility I lay no claim to the authorship, for the first time in my life began to bethink me of publication. Doubtless my fears were heightened by the abrupt contrast between the studious shadowy solitude long habitual to me, and the projected glare of publicity.

  You see, good reader, I am making a confidant of you, and that too in matters that another tyro-editor more discreet would very likely keep to himself, seeking to pass himself off as a veteran. But I desire to make a friend of you, and without frankness how accomplish it?

  In that anxious uncertainty in which I found myself, I felt the imperative need of some one to inform and counsel me, and especially some private and not unfriendly eye to look at my manuscript before I ventured upon aught ulterior. For, the worst of it was that I began to suspect my manuscript of not being the thing it had flattered me with being.

  “You must have somebody” thought Moliere when he, distrustful of cultivated friends, resolved to try his comedy on his cook, and learn what she thought of it. Though for me in my emergency I had no dame of the spit to appeal to, being a bachelor and in lodgings, I was resolved upon seeking out somebody who should at least possess the presumable candor of the Frenchman’s humble critic, even in preference to anybody having nothing but literary qualifications to recommend him. I cast about for such a prodigy and luckily succeeded better than Diogenes in his quest for the Honest Man. He was a mature individual, whom I had known in quite a friendly way as a boy, poor and friendless, a petty shopkeeper’s lad, but who in the end by dint of pluck and capacity and alike educated by books and active contact with his fellows had step by step risen to an influential position as a member of the metropolitan press. He knew all about Popular Opinion and the popular taste. Alike upon his judgement and good-will I thought I could implicitly rely. Nevertheless his first response to my petition was not encouraging. Said he, “It is a ticklish thing, believe me, to decide upon a book in manuscript. Print it and after I have seen what Old Bellwether thinks of it, then will I give you my discreet opinion in the journal of which I have the honor to be the literary editor.”

  “Old Bellwether!” exclaimed I, bewildered and in despair. But he only looked sagacious and said nothing. What is the loneliness of Crusoe, to that horrible solitude in which the literary tyro is thrown, whom the wariness of the wise throws upon the resource of his own inexperienced judgement.

  Whether it was that with some association of the expression of my face old lang syne touched him a little, one can not say, but he presently relented, and said, “O, fish up your heart again, my sweet fellow. I’ll make an exception in your case. Let’s have it. Yes, I’ll look it over and tell you about it in a couple of weeks or so.”

  But before the expiration of that term, chancing to come upon him at the crossing near the statue of the Illustrious Printer which adorns the triangular space in New York ineptly enough christened by some Anglophilist Printing House Square, I hailed him, notwithstanding my mature years, with the nervous eagerness of a youthful tyro—“Well what think you of it?”

  Halted by so summary a challenge he gathered his thoughts together and after a pause during which he seemed adjusting his rejoinder to an exactitude of conscientious accuracy, sententiously he replied:

  “Were I a publisher, I should decline it with thanks.”

  “Why, what’s the matter?” I cried, alarmed at a blunt declaration so little foreseen.

  “Well, for one thing, and the main thing, it is not in the current,—as, by the way, we here happen to be, just here. Let us edge out of this crowd.”

  “But something that is not in the current” I exclaimed, at the same time slipping with him into an open stair-way near by; “something not in the current, something original, is exactly what all publishers clamor for, I am told.”

  “Exactly. But come to the pinch and they are as shy of it as you would be of a panther that escaping from a menagerie should come fawning up to you in the public highway. Besides, my friend, as regards your manuscript, the originality, let me frankly say, is mostly of the negative kind. You tell nothing new. Everybody in these days of universal travel knows all about Naples. Nor is that most favorable to a romancer. In the treatment too, as in the theme, there is nothing American. Your very metre is as old as the hills. The time of your main piece, your piece de resistance, is laid more than a score of years back, an aeon to the popular mind. Yes, and your method is not that of the photographer. You paint. But worst of all I fail to see that anywhere you have laid an anchor to windward by conciliating the suffrages of the ladies, and in marked preference to those of the men.”

  Overwhelmed by all this, I could but interrogatingly exclaim—“The ladies?”

  “The ladies,” he echoed with the imperturbable self-­possession of a proficient; “what women have always been in the gay world, the arbiters of the social success of men, this have they latterly become in the literary sphere, as to every book, the design of which is at all to please.”

  “Well, well, well,” said I bitterly, “there’s Jack Gentian, good fellow as ever lived; there’s Monsieur le Marquis, the best friend of man! I must give up the idea of introducing these genial gentlemen to their kind.—But tell me, now that I think of it you have but advised me as to how a publisher having his eye on the Public might regard the manuscript. But did it at all please you yourself, as a private man?”

  “Ah, that’s quite another thing. Yes, parts of it are pretty good—gave me pleasure—amused me. But my knowledge of literature, not wholly restricted to the books of the day, in the fashion,—books of the mode—was a preparative to the relish. It is otherwise with that peculiar aggregate known in contradistinction to the People as the Public.

  “The People, God bless them, always and everywhere have a certain animal good sense and honesty. Feeling themselves to be ignorant as to most matters lying outside of their practical interests, they lay no claim to universal culture. But the Public, on the contrary, thinks itself highly cultivated, yes, and as to everything, nor has it any inkling of suspicions that possibly it may be a bit mistaken here.”

  “Profound philosophy perhaps,” exclaimed I; “but what profit? Ah, you pronounce the death-warrant of the Marquis de Grandvin.”

  “Stay!” he cried; perhaps anew touched and by something new in my dissenting pleasantry; “I don’t mislike your Marquis. And—and—well I said just now that I as a private man was happily furnished with a fit preparative to the perusal of the thing you edit. Now a thought strikes me. Could people in general be prepared for it, educated up to it—and by some short and easy process, and could the preparative be one with the book itself, bound up with it; why, in that case some moderate success might come, though mark me I can not guarantee it. But, come. A year or two ago a man in my set, Professor McQuick, benevolently composed a little Primer of first principles for private distribution among the Aristarchi of the pastoral press. But upon reconsideration thinking that in good part it was a shot rather fired over these heads than otherwise, he withheld the printing and distribution, and tossed the manuscript to me. Though I do not endorse his principles in-toto, nevertheless some of them apply to your manuscript. Others are not so directly applicable. These last, however, can be weeded perhaps and leave undisturbed the general effect. Pray, you have no preface I think?”

  “None—as yet.
”

  “Capital! This same Primer shall be the preface, the preparative, an entire course of education. I will get the Professor’s assent and send it to you. Transcribe it just as it is, page it with the rest, and hey! for the publisher. But—” and here he assumed an earnestly admonitory air—“should the verdict be disastrous to you, dont try to find out who the publisher’s reader is; and, if you should find out, dont go for him, dont assassinate him. I know all about that; it is insufferable.”

  To close. In all particulars I followed the excellent counsel of my excellent friend; and the present publication, prefaced by the Primer of Professor McQuick, is, thanks to the graciousness of the publisher, the humble result.

  Preface

  AS THE CAPTION to the first section of At the Hostelry, will be found to intimate, one there styled The Marquis is to be assumed as the teller of the story, if story it may be styled. Moreover, toward the close of the concluding section of the same Piece, the aforesaid Marquis introduces one Jack Gentian his friend as the narrator in the Piece following, An Afternoon in Naples.

  Now it naturally belonged to the original design of this volume, that some account of each of these gentlemen should precede the Pieces respectively ascribed to them. That design, however, if carried out would overmuch enlarge the volume. And it is well to bear in mind that though good measure is not without praise in a huckster, not always is it commendable in an author.

  And yet, in the truest sense author am I none. For is he who is at the pains of working into literary form the sallies of an improvisator, suppressing his more flighty pyrotechnics, and endeavoring to methodise into writing his detached inspirations delivered at various times; can such a mere craftsman lay claim to authorship? Hardly, since that implies origination.