Herman Melville- Complete Poems Read online

  Books which only the scholar heeds—

  Are flung to his kennel. It is ravage and range,

  And gardens are left to weeds.

  Turned adrift into war

  Man runs wild on the plain,

  Like the jennets let loose

  On the Pampas—zebras again.

  Like the Pleiads dim, see the tents through the storm—

  Aloft by the hill-side hamlet’s graves,

  On a head-stone used for a hearth-stone there

  The water is bubbling for punch for our braves.

  What if the night be drear, and the blast

  Ghostly shrieks? their rollicking staves

  Make frolic the heart; beating time with their swords,

  What care they if Winter raves?

  Is life but a dream? and so,

  In the dream do men laugh aloud?

  So strange seems mirth in a camp,

  So like a white tent to a shroud.

  II

  The May-weed springs; and comes a Man

  And mounts our Signal Hill;

  A quiet Man, and plain in garb—

  Briefly he looks his fill,

  Then drops his gray eye on the ground,

  Like a loaded mortar he is still:

  Meekness and grimness meet in him—

  The silent General.

  Were men but strong and wise,

  Honest as Grant, and calm,

  War would be left to the red and black ants,

  And the happy world disarm.

  That eve a stir was in the camps,

  Forerunning quiet soon to come

  Among the streets of beechen huts

  No more to know the drum.

  The weed shall choke the lowly door,

  And foxes peer within the gloom,

  Till scared perchance by Mosby’s prowling men,

  Who ride in the rear of doom.

  Far West, and farther South,

  Wherever the sword has been,

  Deserted camps are met,

  And desert graves are seen.

  The livelong night they ford the flood;

  With guns held high they silent press,

  Till shimmers the grass in their bayonets’ sheen—

  On Morning’s banks their ranks they dress;

  Then by the forests lightly wind,

  Whose waving boughs the pennons seem to bless,

  Borne by the cavalry scouting on—

  Sounding the Wilderness.

  Like shoals of fish in spring

  That visit Crusoe’s isle,

  The host in the lonesome place—

  The hundred thousand file.

  The foe that held his guarded hills

  Must speed to woods afar;

  For the scheme that was nursed by the Culpepper hearth

  With the slowly-smoked cigar—

  The scheme that smouldered through winter long

  Now bursts into act—into war—

  The resolute scheme of a heart as calm

  As the Cyclone’s core.

  The fight for the city is fought

  In Nature’s old domain;

  Man goes out to the wilds,

  And Orpheus’ charm is vain.

  In glades they meet skull after skull

  Where pine-cones lay—the rusted gun,

  Green shoes full of bones, the mouldering coat

  And cuddled-up skeleton;

  And scores of such. Some start as in dreams,

  And comrades lost bemoan:

  By the edge of those wilds Stonewall had charged—

  But the Year and the Man were gone.

  At the height of their madness

  The night winds pause,

  Recollecting themselves;

  But no lull in these wars.

  A gleam!—a volley! And who shall go

  Storming the swarmers in jungles dread?

  No cannon-ball answers, no proxies are sent—

  They rush in the shrapnel’s stead.

  Plume and sash are vanities now—

  Let them deck the pall of the dead;

  They go where the shade is, perhaps into Hades,

  Where the brave of all times have led.

  There’s a dust of hurrying feet,

  Bitten lips and bated breath,

  And drums that challenge to the grave,

  And faces fixed, forefeeling death.

  What husky huzzahs in the hazy groves—

  What flying encounters fell;

  Pursuer and pursued like ghosts disappear

  In gloomed shade—their end who shall tell?

  The crippled, a ragged-barked stick for a crutch,

  Limp to some elfin dell—

  Hobble from the sight of dead faces—white

  As pebbles in a well.

  Few burial rites shall be;

  No priest with book and band

  Shall come to the secret place

  Of the corpse in the foeman’s land.

  Watch and fast, march and fight—clutch your gun!

  Day-fights and night-fights; sore is the stress;

  Look, through the pines what line comes on?

  Longstreet slants through the hauntedness!

  ’Tis charge for charge, and shout for yell:

  Such battles on battles oppress—

  But Heaven lent strength, the Right strove well,

  And emerged from the Wilderness.

  Emerged, for the way was won;

  But the Pillar of Smoke that led

  Was brand-like with ghosts that went up

  Ashy and red.

  None can narrate that strife in the pines,

  A seal is on it—Sabæan lore!

  Obscure as the wood, the entangled rhyme

  But hints at the maze of war—

  Vivid glimpses or livid through peopled gloom,

  And fires which creep and char—

  A riddle of death, of which the slain

  Sole solvers are.

  Long they withhold the roll

  Of the shroudless dead. It is right;

  Not yet can we bear the flare

  Of the funeral light.

  On the Photograph of a Corps Commander

  AY, man is manly. Here you see

  The warrior-carriage of the head,

  And brave dilation of the frame;

  And lighting all, the soul that led

  In Spottsylvania’s charge to victory,

  Which justifies his fame.

  A cheering picture. It is good

  To look upon a Chief like this,

  In whom the spirit moulds the form.

  Here favoring Nature, oft remiss,

  With eagle mien expressive has endued

  A man to kindle strains that warm.

  Trace back his lineage, and his sires,

  Yeoman or noble, you shall find

  Enrolled with men of Agincourt,

  Heroes who shared great Harry’s mind.

  Down to us come the knightly Norman fires,

  And front the Templars bore.

  Nothing can lift the heart of man

  Like manhood in a fellow-man.

  The thought of heaven’s great King afar

  But humbles us—too weak to scan;

  But manly greatness men can span,

  And feel the bonds that draw.

  The Swamp Angel k

  THERE is a coal-black Angel

  With a thick Afric lip,

  And he dwells (like the hunt
ed and harried)

  In a swamp where the green frogs dip.

  But his face is against a City

  Which is over a bay of the sea,

  And he breathes with a breath that is blastment,

  And dooms by a far decree.

  By night there is fear in the City,

  Through the darkness a star soareth on;

  There’s a scream that screams up to the zenith,

  Then the poise of a meteor lone—

  Lighting far the pale fright of the faces,

  And downward the coming is seen;

  Then the rush, and the burst, and the havoc,

  And wails and shrieks between.

  It comes like the thief in the gloaming;

  It comes, and none may foretell

  The place of the coming—the glaring;

  They live in a sleepless spell

  That wizens, and withers, and whitens;

  It ages the young, and the bloom

  Of the maiden is ashes of roses—

  The Swamp Angel broods in his gloom.

  Swift is his messengers’ going,

  But slowly he saps their halls,

  As if by delay deluding.

  They move from their crumbling walls

  Farther and farther away;

  But the Angel sends after and after,

  By night with the flame of his ray—

  By night with the voice of his screaming—

  Sends after them, stone by stone,

  And farther walls fall, farther portals,

  And weed follows weed through the Town.

  Is this the proud City? the scorner

  Which never would yield the ground?

  Which mocked at the coal-black Angel?

  The cup of despair goes round.

  Vainly she calls upon Michael

  (The white man’s seraph was he),

  For Michael has fled from his tower

  To the Angel over the sea.

  Who weeps for the woeful City

  Let him weep for our guilty kind;

  Who joys at her wild despairing—

  Christ, the Forgiver, convert his mind.

  The Battle for the Bay

  (August, 1864)

  O MYSTERY of noble hearts,

  To whom mysterious seas have been

  In midnight watches, lonely calm and storm,

  A stern, sad discipline,

  And rooted out the false and vain,

  And chastened them to aptness for

  Devotion and the deeds of war,

  And death which smiles and cheers in spite of pain.

  Beyond the bar the land-wind dies,

  The prows becharmed at anchor swim:

  A summer night; the stars withdrawn look down—

  Fair eve of battle grim.

  The sentries pace, bonetas glide;

  Below, the sleeping sailors swing,

  And in their dreams to quarters spring,

  Or cheer their flag, or breast a stormy tide.

  But drums are beat: Up anchor all!

  The triple lines steam slowly on;

  Day breaks, and through the sweep of decks each man

  Stands coldly by his gun—

  As cold as it. But he shall warm—

  Warm with the solemn metal there,

  And all its ordered fury share,

  In attitude a gladiatorial form.

  The Admiral—yielding to the love

  Which held his life and ship so dear—

  Sailed second in the long fleet’s midmost line;

  Yet thwarted all their care:

  He lashed himself aloft, and shone

  Star of the fight, with influence sent

  Throughout the dusk embattlement;

  And so they neared the strait and walls of stone.

  No sprightly fife as in the field,

  The decks were hushed like fanes in prayer;

  Behind each man a holy angel stood—

  He stood, though none was ’ware.

  Out spake the forts on either hand,

  Back speak the ships when spoken to,

  And set their flags in concert true,

  And On and in! is Farragut’s command.

  But what delays? ’mid wounds above

  Dim buoys give hint of death below—

  Sea-ambuscades, where evil art had aped

  Hecla that hides in snow.

  The centre-van, entangled, trips;

  The starboard leader holds straight on:

  A cheer for the Tecumseh!—nay,

  Before their eyes the turreted ship goes down!

  The fire redoubles. While the fleet

  Hangs dubious—ere the horror ran—

  The Admiral rushes to his rightful place—

  Well met! apt hour and man!—

  Closes with peril, takes the lead,

  His action is a stirring call;

  He strikes his great heart through them all,

  And is the genius of their daring deed.

  The forts are daunted, slack their fire,

  Confounded by the deadlier aim

  And rapid broadsides of the speeding fleet,

  And fierce denouncing flame.

  Yet shots from four dark hulls embayed

  Come raking through the loyal crews,

  Whom now each dying mate endues

  With his last look, anguished yet undismayed.

  A flowering time to guilt is given,

  And traitors have their glorying hour;

  O late, but sure, the righteous Paramount comes—

  Palsy is on their power!

  So proved it with the rebel keels,

  The strong-holds past: assailed, they run;

  The Selma strikes, and the work is done:

  The dropping anchor the achievement seals.

  But no, she turns—the Tennessee!

  The solid Ram of iron and oak,

  Strong as Evil, and bold as Wrong, though lone—

  A pestilence in her smoke.

  The flag-ship is her singled mark,

  The wooden Hartford. Let her come;

  She challenges the planet of Doom,

  And naught shall save her—not her iron bark.

  Slip anchor, all! and at her, all!

  Bear down with rushing beaks—and now!

  First the Monongahela struck—and reeled;

  The Lackawana’s prow

  Next crashed—crashed, but not crashing; then

  The Admiral rammed, and rasping nigh

  Sloped in a broadside, which glanced by:

  The Monitors battered at her adamant den.

  The Chickasaw plunged beneath the stern

  And pounded there; a huge wrought orb

  From the Manhattan pierced one wall, but dropped;

  Others the seas absorb.

  Yet stormed on all sides, narrowed in,

  Hampered and cramped, the bad one fought—

  Spat ribald curses from the port

  Whose shutters, jammed, locked up this Man-of-Sin.

  No pause or stay. They made a din

  Like hammers round a boiler forged;

  Now straining strength tangled itself with strength,

  Till Hate her will disgorged.

  The white flag showed, the fight was won—

  Mad shouts went up that shook the Bay;

  But pale on the scarred fleet’s decks there lay

  A silent man for every silenced gun.

  And quiet far below the wave,

  Where never cheers shall move th
eir sleep,

  Some who did boldly, nobly earn them, lie—

  Charmed children of the deep.

  But decks that now are in the seed,

  And cannon yet within the mine,

  Shall thrill the deeper, gun and pine,

  Because of the Tecumseh’s glorious deed.

  Sheridan at Cedar Creek

  (October, 1864)

  SHOE the steed with silver

  That bore him to the fray,

  When he heard the guns at dawning—

  Miles away;

  When he heard them calling, calling—

  Mount! nor stay:

  Quick, or all is lost;

  They’ve surprised and stormed the post,

  They push your routed host—

  Gallop! retrieve the day.

  House the horse in ermine—

  For the foam-flake blew

  White through the red October;

  He thundered into view;

  They cheered him in the looming,

  Horseman and horse they knew.

  The turn of the tide began,

  The rally of bugles ran,

  He swung his hat in the van;

  The electric hoof-spark flew.

  Wreathe the steed and lead him—

  For the charge he led

  Touched and turned the cypress

  Into amaranths for the head

  Of Philip, king of riders,

  Who raised them from the dead.

  The camp (at dawning lost),

  By eve, recovered—forced,

  Rang with laughter of the host

  At belated Early fled.

  Shroud the horse in sable—

  For the mounds they heap!

  There is firing in the Valley,

  And yet no strife they keep;

  It is the parting volley,

  It is the pathos deep.

  There is glory for the brave

  Who lead, and nobly save,