Herman Melville- Complete Poems Read online

  But the gauntlet now is nearly run,

  The spleenful forts by fits reply,

  And the burning boat dies down in morning’s sky.

  All out of range. Adieu, Messieurs!

  Jeers, as it speeds, our parting gun.

  So burst we through their barriers

  And menaces every one:

  So Porter proves himself a brave man’s son.g

  Stonewall Jackson

  Mortally wounded at Chancellorsville

  (May, 1863)

  THE Man who fiercest charged in fight,

  Whose sword and prayer were long—

  Stonewall!

  Even him who stoutly stood for Wrong,

  How can we praise? Yet coming days

  Shall not forget him with this song.

  Dead is the Man whose Cause is dead,

  Vainly he died and set his seal—

  Stonewall!

  Earnest in error, as we feel;

  True to the thing he deemed was due,

  True as John Brown or steel.

  Relentlessly he routed us;

  But we relent, for he is low—

  Stonewall!

  Justly his fame we outlaw; so

  We drop a tear on the bold Virginian’s bier,

  Because no wreath we owe.

  Stonewall Jackson

  (Ascribed to a Virginian)

  ONE man we claim of wrought renown

  Which not the North shall care to slur;

  A Modern lived who sleeps in death,

  Calm as the marble Ancients are:

  ’Tis he whose life, though a vapor’s wreath,

  Was charged with the lightning’s burning breath—

  Stonewall, stormer of the war.

  But who shall hymn the Roman heart?

  A stoic he, but even more;

  The iron will and lion thew

  Were strong to inflict as to endure:

  Who like him could stand, or pursue?

  His fate the fatalist followed through;

  In all his great soul found to do

  Stonewall followed his star.

  He followed his star on the Romney march

  Through the sleet to the wintry war;

  And he followed it on when he bowed the grain—

  The Wind of the Shenandoah;

  At Gaines’s Mill in the giants’ strain—

  On the fierce forced stride to Manassas-plain,

  Where his sword with thunder was clothed again,

  Stonewall followed his star.

  His star he followed athwart the flood

  To Potomac’s Northern shore,

  When midway wading, his host of braves

  “My Maryland!” loud did roar—

  To red Antietam’s field of graves,

  Through mountain-passes, woods and waves,

  They followed their pagod with hymns and glaives,

  For Stonewall followed a star.

  Back it led him to Marye’s slope,

  Where the shock and the fame he bore;

  And to green Moss-Neck it guided him—

  Brief respite from throes of war:

  To the laurel glade by the Wilderness grim,

  Through climaxed victory naught shall dim,

  Even unto death it piloted him—

  Stonewall followed his star.

  Its lead he followed in gentle ways

  Which never the valiant mar;

  A cap we sent him, bestarred, to replace

  The sun-scorched helm of war:

  A fillet he made of the shining lace

  Childhood’s laughing brow to grace—

  Not his was a goldsmith’s star.

  O, much of doubt in after days

  Shall cling, as now, to the war;

  Of the right and the wrong they’ll still debate,

  Puzzled by Stonewall’s star:

  “Fortune went with the North elate,”

  “Ay, but the South had Stonewall’s weight,

  And he fell in the South’s great war.”

  Gettysburg

  The Check

  (July, 1863)

  O PRIDE of the days in prime of the months

  Now trebled in great renown,

  When before the ark of our holy cause

  Fell Dagon down—

  Dagon foredoomed, who, armed and targed,

  Never his impious heart enlarged

  Beyond that hour; God walled his power,

  And there the last invader charged.

  He charged, and in that charge condensed

  His all of hate and all of fire;

  He sought to blast us in his scorn,

  And wither us in his ire.

  Before him went the shriek of shells—

  Aerial screamings, taunts and yells;

  Then the three waves in flashed advance

  Surged, but were met, and back they set:

  Pride was repelled by sterner pride,

  And Right is a strong-hold yet.

  Before our lines it seemed a beach

  Which wild September gales have strown

  With havoc on wreck, and dashed therewith

  Pale crews unknown—

  Men, arms, and steeds. The evening sun

  Died on the face of each lifeless one,

  And died along the winding marge of fight

  And searching-parties lone.

  Sloped on the hill the mounds were green,

  Our centre held that place of graves,

  And some still hold it in their swoon,

  And over these a glory waves.

  The warrior-monument, crashed in fight,h

  Shall soar transfigured in loftier light,

  A meaning ampler bear;

  Soldier and priest with hymn and prayer

  Have laid the stone, and every bone

  Shall rest in honor there.

  The House-top

  A Night Piece

  (July, 1863)

  NO sleep. The sultriness pervades the air

  And binds the brain—a dense oppression, such

  As tawny tigers feel in matted shades,

  Vexing their blood and making apt for ravage.

  Beneath the stars the roofy desert spreads

  Vacant as Libya. All is hushed near by.

  Yet fitfully from far breaks a mixed surf

  Of muffled sound, the Atheist roar of riot.

  Yonder, where parching Sirius set in drought,

  Balefully glares red Arson—there—and there.

  The Town is taken by its rats—ship-rats

  And rats of the wharves. All civil charms

  And priestly spells which late held hearts in awe—

  Fear-bound, subjected to a better sway

  Than sway of self; these like a dream dissolve,

  And man rebounds whole æons back in nature.i

  Hail to the low dull rumble, dull and dead,

  And ponderous drag that shakes the wall.

  Wise Draco comes, deep in the midnight roll

  Of black artillery; he comes, though late;

  In code corroborating Calvin’s creed

  And cynic tyrannies of honest kings;

  He comes, nor parlies; and the Town, redeemed,

  Gives thanks devout; nor, being thankful, heeds

  The grimy slur on the Republic’s faith implied,

  Which holds that Man is naturally good,

  And—more—is Nature’s Roman, n
ever to be scourged.

  Look-out Mountain

  The Night Fight

  (November, 1863)

  WHO inhabiteth the Mountain

  That it shines in lurid light,

  And is rolled about with thunders,

  And terrors, and a blight,

  Like Kaf the peak of Eblis—

  Kaf, the evil height?

  Who has gone up with a shouting

  And a trumpet in the night?

  There is battle in the Mountain—

  Might assaulteth Might;

  ’Tis the fastness of the Anarch,

  Torrent-torn, an ancient height;

  The crags resound the clangor

  Of the war of Wrong and Right;

  And the armies in the valley

  Watch and pray for dawning light.

  Joy, joy, the day is breaking,

  And the cloud is rolled from sight;

  There is triumph in the Morning

  For the Anarch’s plunging flight;

  God has glorified the Mountain

  Where a Banner burneth bright,

  And the armies in the valley

  They are fortified in right.

  Chattanooga

  (November, 1863)

  A KINDLING impulse seized the host

  Inspired by heaven’s elastic air;j

  Their hearts outran their General’s plan,

  Though Grant commanded there—

  Grant, who without reserve can dare;

  And, “Well, go on and do your will,”

  He said, and measured the mountain then:

  So master-riders fling the rein—

  But you must know your men.

  On yester-morn in grayish mist,

  Armies like ghosts on hills had fought,

  And rolled from the cloud their thunders loud

  The Cumberlands far had caught:

  To-day the sunlit steeps are sought.

  Grant stood on cliffs whence all was plain,

  And smoked as one who feels no cares;

  But mastered nervousness intense

  Alone such calmness wears.

  The summit-cannon plunge their flame

  Sheer down the primal wall,

  But up and up each linking troop

  In stretching festoons crawl—

  Nor fire a shot. Such men appall

  The foe, though brave. He, from the brink,

  Looks far along the breadth of slope,

  And sees two miles of dark dots creep,

  And knows they mean the cope.

  He sees them creep. Yet here and there

  Half hid ’mid leafless groves they go;

  As men who ply through traceries high

  Of turreted marbles show—

  So dwindle these to eyes below.

  But fronting shot and flanking shell

  Sliver and rive the inwoven ways;

  High tops of oaks and high hearts fall,

  But never the climbing stays.

  From right to left, from left to right

  They roll the rallying cheer—

  Vie with each other, brother with brother,

  Who shall the first appear—

  What color-bearer with colors clear

  In sharp relief, like sky-drawn Grant,

  Whose cigar must now be near the stump—

  While in solicitude his back

  Heaps slowly to a hump.

  Near and more near; till now the flags

  Run like a catching flame;

  And one flares highest, to peril nighest—

  He means to make a name:

  Salvos! they give him his fame.

  The staff is caught, and next the rush,

  And then the leap where death has led;

  Flag answered flag along the crest,

  And swarms of rebels fled.

  But some who gained the envied Alp,

  And—eager, ardent, earnest there—

  Dropped into Death’s wide-open arms,

  Quelled on the wing like eagles struck in air—

  Forever they slumber young and fair,

  The smile upon them as they died;

  Their end attained, that end a height:

  Life was to these a dream fulfilled,

  And death a starry night.

  The Armies of the Wilderness

  (1863–4)

  I

  LIKE snows the camps on Southern hills

  Lay all the winter long,

  Our levies there in patience stood—

  They stood in patience strong.

  On fronting slopes gleamed other camps

  Where faith as firmly clung:

  Ah, froward kin! so brave amiss—

  The zealots of the Wrong.

  In this strife of brothers

  (God, hear their country call),

  However it be, whatever betide,

  Let not the just one fall.

  Through the pointed glass our soldiers saw

  The base-ball bounding sent;

  They could have joined them in their sport

  But for the vale’s deep rent.

  And others turned the reddish soil,

  Like diggers of graves they bent:

  The reddish soil and trenching toil

  Begat presentiment.

  Did the Fathers feel mistrust?

  Can no final good be wrought?

  Over and over, again and again

  Must the fight for the Right be fought?

  They lead a Gray-back to the crag:

  “Your earth-works yonder—tell us, man!”

  “A prisoner—no deserter, I,

  Nor one of the tell-tale clan.”

  His rags they mark: “True-blue like you

  Should wear the color—your Country’s, man!”

  He grinds his teeth: “However that be,

  Yon earth-works have their plan.”

  Such brave ones, foully snared

  By Belial’s wily plea,

  Were faithful unto the evil end—

  Feudal fidelity.

  “Well, then, your camps—come, tell the names!”

  Freely he leveled his finger then:

  “Yonder—see—are our Georgians; on the crest,

  The Carolinians; lower, past the glen,

  Virginians—Alabamians—Mississippians—Kentuckians

  (Follow my finger)—Tennesseeans; and the ten

  Camps there—ask your grave-pits; they’ll tell.

  Halloa! I see the picket-hut, the den

  Where I last night lay.” “Where’s Lee?”

  “In the hearts and bayonets of all yon men!”

  The tribes swarm up to war

  As in ages long ago,

  Ere the palm of promise leaved

  And the lily of Christ did blow.

  Their mounted pickets for miles are spied

  Dotting the lowland plain,

  The nearer ones in their veteran-rags—

  Loutish they loll in lazy disdain.

  But ours in perilous places bide

  With rifles ready and eyes that strain

  Deep through the dim suspected wood

  Where the Rapidan rolls amain.

  The Indian has passed away,

  But creeping comes another—

  Deadlier far. Picket,

  Take heed—take heed of thy brother!

  From a wood-hung height, an outpost lone,

  Crowned with a woodman’s fort, />
  The sentinel looks on a land of dole,

  Like Paran, all amort.

  Black chimneys, gigantic in moor-like wastes,

  The scowl of the clouded sky retort;

  The hearth is a houseless stone again—

  Ah! where shall the people be sought?

  Since the venom such blastment deals,

  The South should have paused, and thrice,

  Ere with heat of her hate she hatched

  The egg with the cockatrice.

  A path down the mountain winds to the glade

  Where the dead of the Moonlight Fight lie low;

  A hand reaches out of the thin-laid mould

  As begging help which none can bestow.

  But the field-mouse small and busy ant

  Heap their hillocks, to hide if they may the woe:

  By the bubbling spring lies the rusted canteen,

  And the drum which the drummer-boy dying let go.

  Dust to dust, and blood for blood—

  Passion and pangs! Has Time

  Gone back? or is this the Age

  Of the world’s great Prime?

  The wagon mired and cannon dragged

  Have trenched their scar; the plain

  Tramped like the cindery beach of the damned—

  A site for the city of Cain.

  And stumps of forests for dreary leagues

  Like a massacre show. The armies have lain

  By fires where gums and balms did burn,

  And the seeds of Summer’s reign.

  Where are the birds and boys?

  Who shall go chestnutting when

  October returns? The nuts—

  O, long ere they grow again.

  They snug their huts with the chapel-pews,

  In court-houses stable their steeds—

  Kindle their fires with indentures and bonds,

  And old Lord Fairfax’s parchment deeds;

  And Virginian gentlemen’s libraries old—