Herman Melville- Complete Poems Read online

  HERMAN MELVILLE

  COMPLETE POEMS

  Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War

  Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land

  John Marr and Other Sailors with Some Sea-Pieces

  Timoleon Etc.

  Weeds and Wildings Chiefly: with A Rose or Two

  Parthenope

  Uncollected Poetry and Prose-and-Verse

  Hershel Parker, editor

  LIBRARY OF AMERICA E-BOOK CLASSICS

  HERMAN MELVILLE: COMPLETE POEMS

  Volume compilation, notes, and chronology copyright © 2019 by

  Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., New York, N.Y.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without

  the permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief

  quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Published in the United States by Library of America

  Visit our website at www.loa.org.

  Published Poems copyright © 2009 by Northwestern University Press and

  The Newberry Library. Published 2009. All rights reserved.

  Clarel copyright © 1991 by Northwestern University Press

  and The Newberry Library. All rights reserved.

  Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Uncompleted Writings copyright © 2017 by

  Northwestern University Press and The Newberry Library. Published 2017.

  All rights reserved.

  Maps in back matter

  copyright © 2019 by Lucidity Information Design, LLC.

  Distributed to the trade in the United States

  by Penguin Random House Inc.

  and in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Ltd.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018962316

  eISBN 978–1–59853–619–5

  The Library of America—320

  Herman Melville:

  Complete Poems

  is published with support from

  THE ACHELIS & BODMAN FOUNDATION

  AND

  THE POETRY FOUNDATION

  HERSHEL PARKER

  WROTE THE NOTES AND CHRONOLOGY

  AND SELECTED THE TEXTS

  FOR THIS VOLUME

  ROBERT A. SANDBERG

  WROTE THE NOTE ON THE TEXTS

  Contents

  (Each section has its own table of contents.)

  BATTLE-PIECES AND ASPECTS OF THE WAR

  CLAREL: A POEM AND PILGRIMAGE IN THE HOLY LAND

  JOHN MARR AND OTHER SAILORS WITH SOME SEA-PIECES

  TIMOLEON ETC.

  WEEDS AND WILDINGS CHIEFLY: WITH A ROSE OR TWO

  PARTHENOPE

  UNCOLLECTED POETRY AND PROSE-AND-VERSE

  Maps to Clarel

  Chronology

  Note on the Texts

  Notes

  Index of Titles and First Lines

  BATTLE-PIECES

  AND

  ASPECTS OF THE WAR

  THE BATTLE-PIECES

  IN THIS VOLUME ARE DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF

  THE

  THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND

  WHO IN THE WAR

  FOR THE MAINTENANCE OF THE UNION

  FELL DEVOTEDLY

  UNDER THE FLAG OF THEIR FATHERS

  WITH FEW EXCEPTIONS, the Pieces in this volume originated in an impulse imparted by the fall of Richmond. They were composed without reference to collective arrangement, but, being brought together in review, naturally fall into the order assumed.

  The events and incidents of the conflict—making up a whole, in varied amplitude, corresponding with the geographical area covered by the war—from these but a few themes have been taken, such as for any cause chanced to imprint themselves upon the mind.

  The aspects which the strife as a memory assumes are as manifold as are the moods of involuntary meditation—moods variable, and at times widely at variance. Yielding instinctively, one after another, to feelings not inspired from any one source exclusively, and unmindful, without purposing to be, of consistency, I seem, in most of these verses, to have but placed a harp in a window, and noted the contrasted airs which wayward winds have played upon the strings.

  CONTENTS

  The Portent

  Misgivings

  The Conflict of Convictions

  Apathy and Enthusiasm

  The March into Virginia

  Lyon

  Ball’s Bluff

  Dupont’s Round Fight

  The Stone Fleet

  Donelson

  The Cumberland

  In the Turret

  The Temeraire

  A Utilitarian View of the Monitor’s Fight

  Shiloh

  The Battle for the Mississippi

  Malvern Hill

  The Victor of Antietam

  Battle of Stone River, Tennessee

  Running the Batteries

  Stonewall Jackson

  Stonewall Jackson (Ascribed to a Virginian)

  Gettysburg

  The House-top

  Look-out Mountain

  Chattanooga

  The Armies of the Wilderness

  On the Photograph of a Corps Commander

  The Swamp Angel

  The Battle for the Bay

  Sheridan at Cedar Creek

  In the Prison Pen

  The College Colonel

  The Eagle of the Blue

  A Dirge for McPherson

  At the Cannon’s Mouth

  The March to the Sea

  The Frenzy in the Wake

  The Fall of Richmond

  The Surrender at Appomattox

  A Canticle

  The Martyr

  “The Coming Storm”

  Rebel Color-bearers at Shiloh

  The Muster

  Aurora-Borealis

  The Released Rebel Prisoner

  A Grave near Petersburg, Virginia

  “Formerly a Slave”

  The Apparition

  Magnanimity Baffled

  On the Slain Collegians

  America

  VERSES INSCRIPTIVE AND MEMORIAL

  On the Home Guards who perished in the Defense of Lexington, Missouri

  Inscription for Graves at Pea Ridge, Arkansas

  The Fortitude of the North under the Disaster of the Second Manassas

  On the Men of Maine killed in the Victory of Baton Rouge, Louisiana

  An Epitaph

  Inscription for Marye’s Heights, Fredericksburg

  The Mound by the Lake

  On the Slain at Chickamauga

  An uninscribed Monument on one of the Battle-fields of the Wilderness

  On Sherman’s Men who fell in the Assault of Kenesaw Mountain, Georgia

  On the Grave of a young Cavalry Officer killed in the Valley of Virginia

  A Requiem for Soldiers lost in Ocean Transports

  On a natural Monument in a field of Georgia

  Commemorative of a Naval Victory

  Presentation to the Authorities, by Privates, of Colors captured in Battles ending in the Surrender of Lee

  The Returned Volunteer to his Rifle

  THE SCOUT TOWARD ALDIE

  LEE IN THE CAPITOL

  A ME
DITATION

  NOTES

  SUPPLEMENT

  The Portent

  (1859)

  Hanging from the beam,

  Slowly swaying (such the law),

  Gaunt the shadow on your green,

  Shenandoah!

  The cut is on the crown

  (Lo, John Brown),

  And the stabs shall heal no more.

  Hidden in the cap

  Is the anguish none can draw;

  So your future veils its face,

  Shenandoah!

  But the streaming beard is shown

  (Weird John Brown),

  The meteor of the war.

  Misgivings

  (1860)

  WHEN ocean-clouds over inland hills

  Sweep storming in late autumn brown,

  And horror the sodden valley fills,

  And the spire falls crashing in the town,

  I muse upon my country’s ills—

  The tempest bursting from the waste of Time

  On the world’s fairest hope linked with man’s foulest crime.

  Nature’s dark side is heeded now—

  (Ah! optimist-cheer disheartened flown)—

  A child may read the moody brow

  Of yon black mountain lone.

  With shouts the torrents down the gorges go,

  And storms are formed behind the storm we feel:

  The hemlock shakes in the rafter, the oak in the driving keel.

  The Conflict of Convictions a

  (1860–1)

  ON starry heights

  A bugle wails the long recall;

  Derision stirs the deep abyss,

  Heaven’s ominous silence over all.

  Return, return, O eager Hope,

  And face man’s latter fall.

  Events, they make the dreamers quail;

  Satan’s old age is strong and hale,

  A disciplined captain, gray in skill,

  And Raphael a white enthusiast still;

  Dashed aims, whereat Christ’s martyrs pale,

  Shall Mammon’s slaves fulfill?

  (Dismantle the fort,

  Cut down the fleet—

  Battle no more shall be!

  While the fields for fight in æons to come

  Congeal beneath the sea.)

  The terrors of truth and dart of death

  To faith alike are vain;

  Though comets, gone a thousand years,

  Return again,

  Patient she stands—she can no more—

  And waits, nor heeds she waxes hoar.

  (At a stony gate,

  A statue of stone,

  Weed overgrown—

  Long ’twill wait!)

  But God his former mind retains,

  Confirms his old decree;

  The generations are inured to pains,

  And strong Necessity

  Surges, and heaps Time’s strand with wrecks.

  The People spread like a weedy grass,

  The thing they will they bring to pass,

  And prosper to the apoplex.

  The rout it herds around the heart,

  The ghost is yielded in the gloom;

  Kings wag their heads—Now save thyself

  Who wouldst rebuild the world in bloom.

  (Tide-mark

  And top of the ages’ strife,

  Verge where they called the world to come,

  The last advance of life—

  Ha ha, the rust on the Iron Dome!)

  Nay, but revere the hid event;

  In the cloud a sword is girded on,

  I mark a twinkling in the tent

  Of Michael the warrior one.

  Senior wisdom suits not now,

  The light is on the youthful brow.

  (Ay, in caves the miner see:

  His forehead bears a taper dim;

  Darkness so he feebly braves

  Which foldeth him!)

  But He who rules is old—is old;

  Ah! faith is warm, but heaven with age is cold.

  (Ho ho, ho ho,

  The cloistered doubt

  Of olden times

  Is blurted out!)

  The Ancient of Days forever is young,

  Forever the scheme of Nature thrives;

  I know a wind in purpose strong—

  It spins against the way it drives.

  What if the gulfs their slimed foundations bare?

  So deep must the stones be hurled

  Whereon the throes of ages rear

  The final empire and the happier world.

  (The poor old Past,

  The Future’s slave,

  She drudged through pain and crime

  To bring about the blissful Prime,

  Then—perished. There’s a grave!)

  Power unanointed may come—

  Dominion (unsought by the free)

  And the Iron Dome,

  Stronger for stress and strain,

  Fling her huge shadow athwart the main;

  But the Founders’ dream shall flee.

  Age after age shall be

  As age after age has been,

  (From man’s changeless heart their way they win);

  And death be busy with all who strive—

  Death, with silent negative.

  YEA AND NAY—

  EACH HATH HIS SAY;

  BUT GOD HE KEEPS THE MIDDLE WAY.

  NONE WAS BY

  WHEN HE SPREAD THE SKY;

  WISDOM IS VAIN, AND PROPHESY.

  Apathy and Enthusiasm

  (1860–1)

  I

  O THE clammy cold November,

  And the winter white and dead,

  And the terror dumb with stupor,

  And the sky a sheet of lead;

  And events that came resounding

  With the cry that All was lost,

  Like the thunder-cracks of massy ice

  In intensity of frost—

  Bursting one upon another

  Through the horror of the calm.

  The paralysis of arm

  In the anguish of the heart;

  And the hollowness and dearth.

  The appealings of the mother

  To brother and to brother

  Not in hatred so to part—

  And the fissure in the hearth

  Growing momently more wide.

  Then the glances ’tween the Fates,

  And the doubt on every side,

  And the patience under gloom

  In the stoniness that waits

  The finality of doom.

  II

  So the winter died despairing,

  And the weary weeks of Lent;

  And the ice-bound rivers melted,

  And the tomb of Faith was rent.

  O, the rising of the People

  Came with springing of the grass,

  They rebounded from dejection

  After Easter came to pass.

  And the young were all elation

  Hearing Sumter’s cannon roar,

  And they thought how tame the Nation

  In the age that went before.

  And Michael seemed gigantical,

  The Arch-fiend but a dwarf;

  And at the towers of Erebus

  Our striplings flung the scoff.

  But the elders with foreboding

  Mourned the days forever o’er,

&n
bsp; And recalled the forest proverb,

  The Iroquois’ old saw:

  Grief to every graybeard

  When young Indians lead the war.

  The March into Virginia

  Ending in the First Manassas

  (July, 1861)

  DID all the lets and bars appear

  To every just or larger end,

  Whence should come the trust and cheer?

  Youth must its ignorant impulse lend—

  Age finds place in the rear.

  All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys,

  The champions and enthusiasts of the state:

  Turbid ardors and vain joys

  Not barrenly abate—

  Stimulants to the power mature,

  Preparatives of fate.

  Who here forecasteth the event?

  What heart but spurns at precedent

  And warnings of the wise,

  Contemned foreclosures of surprise?

  The banners play, the bugles call,

  The air is blue and prodigal.

  No berrying party, pleasure-wooed,

  No picnic party in the May,

  Ever went less loth than they

  Into that leafy neighborhood.

  In Bacchic glee they file toward Fate,

  Moloch’s uninitiate;

  Expectancy, and glad surmise

  Of battle’s unknown mysteries.

  All they feel is this: ’tis glory,

  A rapture sharp, though transitory,

  Yet lasting in belaureled story.

  So they gayly go to fight,

  Chatting left and laughing right.

  But some who this blithe mood present,

  As on in lightsome files they fare,

  Shall die experienced ere three days are spent—

  Perish, enlightened by the vollied glare;

  Or shame survive, and, like to adamant,