Herman Melville- Complete Poems

by Herman Melville

  When General Grant, a bigot for his friends—(and thou wert one of his military family in the field)—when he, as President, nominated thee Consul at that very Naples thou so entertainest us with, what whisper, doubtless started by some rival applicant, what ridiculous whisper, was it buzzed in the lobbies, that in spite even of a Grant’s nomination, stranded thee unconfirmed by the Senate? But “Pshaw!” thou exclaimest, amused at the enthusiasm of us sophomores, when, ending thy Neapolitan romance we contendingly fire away with—

  “Bravissimo!”

  “Encore!”

  “Write it out, Major!”

  “Put it in verse!”

  “Good, it will immortalize thee!”

  “And consider, Dean, the glory redounding to the Club!”

  To all which thy expressive “Pshaw!” and the politely proffered snuff-box by way of an added parry, and little more do we get from thee, O, Dean of the Burgundians!

  Well, Major, what thou in thy impatience of pen-drudgery and indifference to any reputation except that old fashioned one of being a man of honor; what thou, for these reasons perchance, never couldst be persuaded to undertake, I, even I, unsolicited have had the temerity to essay.

  And in so doing I have adopted thy earlier rendering of that Afternoon in Naples ere yet thou begannest to exclaim, “I do’nt know what the dogs is the reason, but I can’t remember anything”; that version seeming to me akin to what engravers call the first proofs, less free from the blur that ensues after repeated impressions from the plate. Moreover, not unmindful of the enthusiast’s injunction, “Put it in verse,” I have after a fashion done accordingly. As to the interspersed ballads and ditties—at the which, peradventure, thou mayst stare even as Rip Van Winkle after his resurrection did at his son—I do assure thee, Dean, they are essentially but thoughts and conceits of thine own, the product of seeds which planted and spontaneously developing in me, eventually effloresced into rhyme.

  But to soften the liberty here taken, as well as the licence throughout, yes, and not without hope to propitiate and even please thee, I have so contrived matters that thou personatest the part allotted thee at the special instance of M. de Grandvin; thus in a literary way associating thee with one whose social companionship thou so unaffectedly lovest, and whose magnanimous spirit thou art ever fain to imbibe.

  Vale!

  An Afternoon in Naples

  in the Time of Bomba

  The world of fact and world of Art are two.

  The sole aim of Art is beauty.

  I

  CHARTERING a nondescript holiday hack at his Neapolitan inn, Jack Gentian drives out, and is unexpectedly made the object of a spontaneous demonstration more to be prized by an appreciative recipient than the freedom of the City of New Jerusalem presented in a diamond box by a deputation from the Common Council of that town.

  Behind a span whose cheery pace

  Accorded well with gala trim—

  Each hames, in arch triumphal reared,

  With festive ribbons fluttering gay;

  In Bomba’s Naples sallying forth

  In season when the vineyards mellow,

  Suddenly turning a corner round—

  Ha, happy to meet you, Punchinello!

  And, merrily there, in license free,

  The crowd they caper, droll as he;

  While, arch as any, rolled in fun,

  Such tatterdemalions, many a one!

  We jounced along till, just ahead,

  Nor far from shrine in niche of wall,

  A stoppage fell. His rug or bed

  In midmost way a tumbler spread,

  A posturing mountebank withall;

  Who, though his stage was out of doors,

  Brought down the house in jolly applause.

  “Signor,” exclaims my charioteer,

  Turning, and reining up, the while

  Trying to touch his jaunty hat;

  But here, essaying to condense

  Such opposite movements into one,

  Failing, and letting fall his whip,

  “His Excellency stops the way!”

  His Excellency there, meanwhile—

  Reversed in stature, legs aloft,

  And hobbling jigs on hands for heels—

  Gazed up with blood-shot brow that told

  The tension of that nimble play—

  Gazed up as martyred Peter might;

  And, noting me in landeau-seat

  (Milor, there he opined, no doubt)

  Brisk somersetted back, and stood

  Urbanely bowing, then gave place;

  While, tickled at my puzzled plight,

  Yet mindful that a move was due,

  And knowing me a stranger there,

  With one consent the people part,

  Yielding a passage, and with eyes

  Of friendly fun,—how courteous too!

  Catching an impulse from their air,

  To feet I spring, my beaver doff

  And broadcast wave a blithe salute.

  In genial way how humorsome,

  What pleased responses of surprise:

  From o’er the Alps, and so polite!

  They clap their hands in frank acclaim,

  Matrons in door-ways nod and smile,

  From balcony rogueish girls laugh out

  Or kiss their fingers, rain their nosegays down.

  At such a shower—laugh, clap, and flower—

  My horses shy, the landeau tilts,

  Distractedly the driver pulls.

  But I, Jack Gentian, what reck I,

  The popular hero, object sole

  Of this ovation!—I aver

  No viceroy, king, nor emperor,

  Panjandrum Grand, conquistador—

  Not Cæsar’s self, in car aloft

  Triumphal on the Sacred Way,

  No, nor young Bacchus through glad Asia borne

  Pelted with grapes, exulted so

  As I in hackney-landeau here

  Jolting and jouncing through the waves

  Of confluent commoners who in glee

  Good natured pass before my prow.

  II

  ARRESTED by a second surprise not in harmony with the first, he is thereupon precipitated into meditations more or less profound, though a little mixed, as they say.

  Flattered along by following cheers

  We sped; I musing here in mind,

  Beshrew me, needs be overdrawn

  Those shocking stories bruited wide,

  In England which I left but late,

  Touching dire tyranny in Naples.

  True freedom is to be care-free!

  And care-free seem the people here,

  A truce indeed they seem to keep,

  Gay truce to care and all her brood.

  But, look: what mean yon surly walls?

  A fortress? and in heart of town?

  Even so. And rapt I stare thereon.

  The battlements black-beetling hang

  Over the embrasures’ tiers of throats

  Whose enfilading tongues seem trained

  Less to beat alien foemen off

  Than awe the town. “Rabble!” they said,

  Or in dumb threatening seemed to say,

  “Revolt, and we will rake your lanes!”

  But what strange quietude of wall!

  While musing if response would be,

  Did tourist on the clampt gate tap

  Politely there with slender cane—

  Abrupt, to din condensed of drums

  And blast of thronged trumps trooping first,

  Right and left with clangor and clash
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  The double portals outward burst

  Before thronged bayonets in flash

  Like lightning’s sortie from the cloud.

  Storming from the gloomy tower

  Tempestuous through the caverned arch,

  Like one long lance they lunge along,

  A thousand strong of infantry!

  The captains like to torches flaring,

  Red plumes and scarlet sashes blown,

  Bare sword in hand audacious gleaming;

  While, like ejected lava rolled,

  The files on files are vomited forth

  Eruptive from their crater belched!

  Sidelong, in vulpine craven sort,

  On either flank at louring brows

  Of tag-rag who before their sortie

  Divide in way how all unlike

  Their parting late before my wheels!

  Who makes this sortie? who? and why?

  Anon I learned. Sicilians, these—

  Sicilians from Palermo shipped

  In meet exchange for hirelings lent

  From Naples here to hold the Isle;

  And daily thus in seething town

  From fort to fort are trooping streamed

  To threaten, intimidate, and cow.

  Flaunting the overlording flag,

  Thumping the domineering drum,

  With insolent march of blustering arms

  They clean put out the festive stir,

  Ay, quench the popular fun.

  The fun they quench, but scarce the hate

  In bridled imprecations pale

  Of brooding hearts vindictive there,

  The deadlier bent for rasping curb,

  Through mutterings like deep thunder low,

  Couched thunder ere the leaping bolt,

  The swaggering troops and bullying trumpets go.

  They fleet—they fade. And, altered much,

  In serious sort my way I hold,

  Till revery, taking candor’s tone

  With optimistic influence plead:

  Sad,—bad, confess; but solace bides!

  For much has Nature done, methinks,

  In offset here with kindlier aim.

  If bayonets flash, what vineyards glow!

  Of all these hells of wrath and wrong

  How little feels the lozel light

  Who, thrown upon the odorous sod

  In this indulgent clime of charm

  Scarce knows a thought or feels a care

  Except to take his careless pleasure:

  A fig for Bomba! life is fair

  Squandered in superabundant leisure!

  Ay, but, ye ragamuffs cutting pranks

  About the capering mountebanks,

  Was that indeed mirth’s true elation?

  Or even in some a patched despair,

  Bravery in tatters debonaire,

  True devil-may-care dilapidation?

  Well, be these rubs even how they may,

  Smart cock-plumes in yon headstalls dance,

  Each hames with ribbons flutters gay,

  I see at pole our wreath advance:

  Inodorous muslin garland—true:

  Imposter, but of jocund hue!

  Ah, could one but realities rout,

  A holiday-world it were, no doubt.

  But Naples, sure she lacks not cheer,

  Religion, it is jubilee here—

  Feast follows festa through the year;

  And then such Nature all about!

  No surly moor of forge and mill,

  She charms us glum barbarians still,

  Fleeing from frost, bad bread, or duns,

  Despotic Biz, and devils blue,

  And there’s our pallid invalid ones,

  Their hollow eyes the scene survey;

  They win this clime of more than spice,

  These myrtled shores, to wait the boat

  That ferries (so some pilots say),

  Yes, ferries to the isles afloat,

  The floating isles of Paradise

  In God’s Ægean far away!

  O, scarse in trivial tenor all,

  Much less to mock man’s mortal sigh,

  Those syllables proverbial fall,

  Naples, see Naples, and then—die!

  But, hark: yon low note rising clear;

  A singer!—rein up, charioteer!

  III

  OPENING with a fervent little lyric which, if obscure in purport or anyway questionable to a Hyperborean professor of Agnostic Moral Philosophy, will nevertheless to readers as intelligently sympathetic as our honest narrator, be transparent enough and innocent as the Thirty Thousand Virgins of Cologne.

  “Name me, do, that dulcet Donna

  Whose perennial gifts engaging

  Win the world to dote upon her,

  In meridian never ageing!

  “Look, in climes beyond the palms

  Younger sisters bare young charms—

  She the mellower graces!

  Ripened heart maturely kind,

  St. Martin’s summer of the mind,

  And pathos of the years behind—

  More than empty faces!”

  Who sings? Behold him under bush

  Of vintner’s ivy nigh a porch,

  His rag-fair raiment patched and darned

  But face much like a Delphic coin’s

  New disinterred with clinging soil.

  Tarnished Apollo!—But let pass.

  Best here be heedful, yes, and chary,

  Sentiment nowadays waxeth wary,

  And idle the ever-evoked Alas.

  IV

  QUICK as lightning he is presented with a festive flower by the titillating fingers of a flying Peri, who thereupon spinning in pirouette, evaporates or vanishes.

  Advancing now, we passed hard by

  A regal court where under drill

  Drawn up in line the palace-guard

  Behind tall iron pickets spiked

  With gilded barbs, in martial din

  Clanged down their muskets on the pave.

  Some urchins small looked on, and men

  With eye-lids squeezed, yet letting out

  A flame as of quick lightning thin;

  The Captain of the guard meanwhile,

  A nervous corpulence, on these

  Stealing a restive sidelong glance.

  A curve. And rounding by the bay

  Nigh Edens parked along the verge,

  Brief halt was made amid the press;

  And, instantaneous thereupon,

  A buoyant nymph on odorous wing

  Alighting on the landeau-step,

  Half hovering like a humming-bird,

  A flower pinned to my lapelle,

  Letting a thrill from finger brush

  (Sure, unaware) the sensitive chin;

  Yes, badged me in a twinkling bright

  With O a red and royal rose;

  A Rose just flowering from the bud

  Received my tribute, random coins,

  Beaming received it, chirped adieu,

  Twirled on her pivot, and——was gone!

  An opening came; and in a trice

  The horses went, my landeau rocked,

  The ribbons streamed; while, ruddy now,

  Flushed with the rose’s reflex bloom,

  I dwelt no more on things amiss:

  Come, take thine ease; lean back, my soul;

  The world let spin; what signifies?

  Look, she, the flower-girl—what recks she

  Of
Bomba’s sortie? what indeed!

  Fine sortie of her own, the witch,

  But now she made upon my purse,

  And e’en a craftier sally too!

  V

  HIS heightened spirits are for the time dashed by a tristful encounter.

  A hill there is that laves its feet

  In Naples’ bay and lifts its head

  In jovial season, curled with vines.

  Its name, in pristine years conferred

  By settling Greeks, imports that none

  Who take the prospect thence can pine,

  For such the charm of beauty shown

  Even sorrow’s self they cheerful weened

  Surcease might find and thank good Pan.

  Toward that Hill my landeau drew;

  And there, hard by the verge, were seen

  Two faces with such meaning fraught

  One scarce could mark and straight pass on:

  I bade my charioteer rein up.

  A man it was less hoar with time

  Than bleached through strange immurement long,

  Retaining still, by doom depressed,

  Dim trace of some aspiring prime.

  Seated, he tuned a homely harp

  Watched by a girl, whose filial mien

  Toward one almost a child again,

  Took on a staid maternal tone.

  Nor might one question that the locks

  Which in smoothed natural silvery curls

  Fell on the bowed one’s thread-bare coat

  Betrayed her ministering hand.

  Anon, among some ramblers drawn

  A murmur rose, “’Tis Silvio, Silvio!”

  With inklings more in tone suppressed

  Touching his story, part recalled:

  Clandestine arrest abrupt by night;

  The sole conjecturable cause