Herman Melville – The Complete Collection

Chapter 8

[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 wilds have played upon the strings.]

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 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.[1]

(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, at which 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' strike,

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 blinking light;

Darkness so he feebly braves--

A meagre wight!_)

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.

Agee 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

And 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,

And re called 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,

The throe of Second Manassas share.

Lyon.

Battle of Springfield, Missouri.

(August, 1861.)

Some hearts there are of deeper sort,

Prophetic, sad,

Which yet for cause are trebly clad;

Known death they fly on:

This wizard-heart and heart-of-oak had Lyon.

"They are more than twenty thousand strong,

We less than five,

Too few with such a host to strive"

"Such counsel, fie on!

'Tis battle, or 'tis shame;" and firm stood Lyon.

"For help at need in van we wait--

Retreat or fight:

Retreat the foe would take for flight,

And each proud scion

Feel more elate; the end must come," said Lyon.

By candlelight he wrote the will,

And left his all

To Her for whom 'twas not enough to fall;

Loud neighed Orion

Without the tent; drums beat; we marched with Lyon.

The night-tramp done, we spied the Vale

With guard-fires lit;

Day broke, but trooping clouds made gloom of it:

"A field to die on"

Presaged in his unfaltering heart, brave Lyon.

We fought on the grass, we bled in the corn--

Fate seemed malign;

His horse the Leader led along the line--

Star-browed Orion;

Bitterly fearless, he rallied us there, brave Lyon.

There came a sound like the slitting of air

By a swift sharp sword--

A rush of the sound; and the sleek chest broad

Of black Orion

Heaved, and was fixed; the dead mane waved toward Lyon.

"General, you're hurt--this sleet of balls!"

He seemed half spent;

With moody and bloody brow, he lowly bent:

"The field to die on;

But not--not yet; the day is long," breathed Lyon.

For a time becharmed there fell a lull

In the heart of the fight;

The tree-tops nod, the slain sleep light;

Warm noon-winds sigh on,

And thoughts which he never spake had Lyon.

Texans and Indians trim for a charge:

"Stand ready, men!

Let them come close, right up, and then

After the lead, the iron;

Fire, and charge back!" So strength returned to Lyon.

The Iowa men who held the van,

Half drilled, were new

To battle: "Some one lead us, then we'll do"

Said Corporal Tryon:

"Men! _I_ will lead," and a light glared in Lyon.

On they came: they yelped, and fired;

His spirit sped;

We leveled right in, and the half-breeds fled,

Nor stayed the iron,

Nor captured the crimson corse of Lyon.

This seer foresaw his soldier-doom,

Yet willed the fight.

He never turned; his only flight

Was up to Zion,

Where prophets now and armies greet brave Lyon.

Ball's Bluff.

A Reverie.

(October, 1861.)

One noonday, at my window in the town,

I saw a sight--saddest that eyes can see--

Young soldiers marching lustily

Unto the wars,

With fifes, and flags in mottoed pageantry;

While all the porches, walks, and doors

Were rich with ladies cheering royally.

They moved like Juny morning on the wave,

Their hearts were fresh as clover in its prime

(It was the breezy summer time),

Life throbbed so strong,

How should they dream that Death in a rosy clime

Would come to thin their shining throng?

Youth feels immortal, like the gods sublime.

Weeks passed; and at my window, leaving bed,

By night I mused, of easeful sleep bereft,

On those brave boys (Ah War! thy theft);

Some marching feet

Found pause at last by cliffs Potomac cleft;

Wakeful I mused, while in the street

Far footfalls died away till none were left.

Dupont's Round Fight.

(November, 1861.)

In time and measure perfect moves

All Art whose aim is sure;

Evolving ryhme and stars divine

Have rules, and they endure.

Nor less the Fleet that warred for Right,

And, warring so, prevailed,

In geometric beauty curved,

And in an orbit sailed.

The rebel at Port Royal felt

The Unity overawe,

And rued the spell. A type was here,

And victory of Law.

The Stone Fleet.[2]

An Old Sailor's Lament.

(December, 1861.)

I have a feeling for those ships,

Each worn and ancient one,

With great bluff bows, and broad in the beam;

Ay, it was unkindly done.

But so they serve the Obsolete--

Even so, Stone Fleet!

You'll say I'm doting; do but think

I scudded round the Horn in one--

The Tenedos, a glorious

Good old craft as ever run--

Sunk (how all unmeet!)

With the Old Stone Fleet.

An India ship of fame was she,

Spices and shawls and fans she bore;

A whaler when her wrinkles came--

Turned off! till, spent and poor,