Herman Melville – The Complete Collection

Chapter 13

_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 strees;

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--Sabaean 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 k****e 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.[10]

There is a coal-black Angel

With a thick Afric lip,

And he dwells (like the hunted 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 f right of the fac es,

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 disciple,

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 sailor swing,

And it 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 the 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 sprintly 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

Who 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 their 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 noblys ave,

But no knowledge in the grave

Where the nameless followers sleep.

In the Prison Pen.

(1864.)

Listless he eyes the palisades

And sentries in the glare;

'Tis barren as a pelican-beach--

But his world is ended there.

Nothing to do; and vacant hands

Bring on the i***t-pain;

He tries to think--to recollect,

But the blur is on his brain.

Around him swarm the plaining ghosts

Like those on Virgil's shore--

A wilderness of faces dim,

And pale ones gashed and hoar.

A smiting sun. No shed, no tree;

He totters to his lair--

A den that sick hands dug in earth

Ere famine wasted there,

Or, dropping in his place, he swoons,

Walled in by throngs that press,

Till forth from the throngs they bear him dead--

Dead in his meagreness.

The College Colonel.

He rides at their head;

A crutch by his saddle just slants in view,

One slung arm is in splints, you see,

Yet he guides his strong steed--how coldly too.

He brings his regiment home--

Not as they filed two years before,

But a remnant half-tattered, and battered, and worn,

Like castaway sailors, who--stunned

By the surf's loud roar,

Their mates dragged back and seen no more--

Again and again breast the surge,

And at last crawl, spent, to shore.