Herman Melville – The Complete Collection

Chapter 15

There is sobbing of the strong,

And a pall upon the land;

But the People in their weeping

Bare the iron hand:

Beware the People weeping

When they bare the iron hand.

"The Coming Storm:"

A Picture by S.R. Gifford, and owned by E.B.

Included in the N.A. Exhibition, April, 1865.

All feeling hearts must feel for him

Who felt this picture. Presage dim--

Dim inklings from the shadowy sphere

Fixed him and fascinated here.

A demon-cloud like the mountain one

Burst on a spirit as mild

As this urned lake, the home of shades.

But Shakspeare's pensive child

Never the lines had lightly scanned,

Steeped in fable, steeped in fate;

The Hamlet in his heart was 'ware,

Such hearts can antedate.

No utter surprise can come to him

Who reaches Shakspeare's core;

That which we seek and shun is there--

Man's final lore.

Rebel Color-bearers at Shiloh:[16]

A plea against the vindictive cry raised by civilians shortly after the surrender at Appomattox.

The color-bearers facing death

White in the whirling sulphurous wreath,

Stand boldly out before the line

Right and left their glances go,

Proud of each other, glorying in their show;

Their battle-flags about them blow,

And fold them as in flame divine:

Such living robes are only seen

Round martyrs burning on the green--

And martyrs for the Wrong have been.

Perish their Cause! but mark the men--

Mark the planted statues, then

Draw trigger on them if you can.

The leader of a patriot-band

Even so could view rebels who so could stand;

And this when peril pressed him sore,

Left aidless in the shivered front of war--

Skulkers behind, defiant foes before,

And fighting with a broken brand.

The challenge in that courage rare--

Courage defenseless, proudly bare--

Never could tempt him; he could dare

Strike up the leveled rifle there.

Sunday at Shiloh, and the day

When Stonewall charged--McClellan's crimson May,

And Chickamauga's wave of death,

And of the Wilderness the cypress wreath--

All these have passed away.

The life in the veins of Treason lags,

Her daring color-bearers drop their flags,

And yield. _Now_ shall we fire?

Can poor spite be?

Shall nobleness in victory less aspire

Than in reverse? Spare Spleen her ire,

And think how Grant met Lee.

The Muster:[17]

Suggested by the Two Days' Review at Washington

(May, 1865.)

The Abrahamic river--

Patriarch of floods,

Calls the roll of all his streams

And watery mutitudes:

Torrent cries to torrent,

The rapids hail the fall;

With shouts the inland freshets

Gather to the call.

The quotas of the Nation,

Like the water-shed of waves,

Muster into union--

Eastern warriors, Western braves.

Martial strains are mingling,

Though distant far the bands,

And the wheeling of the squadrons

Is like surf upon the sands.

The bladed guns are gleaming--

Drift in lengthened trim,

Files on files for hazy miles--

Nebulously dim.

O Milky Way of armies--

Star rising after star,

New banners of the Commonwealths,

And eagles of the War.

The Abrahamic river

To sea-wide fullness fed,

Pouring from the thaw-lands

By the God of floods is led:

His deep enforcing current

The streams of ocean own,

And Europe's marge is evened

By rills from Kansas lone.

Aurora-Borealis.

Commemorative of the Dissolution of Armies at the Peace.

(May, 1865.)

What power disbands the Northern Lights

After their steely play?

The lonely watcher feels an awe

Of Nature's sway,

As when appearing,

He marked their flashed uprearing

In the cold gloom--

Retreatings and advancings,

(Like dallyings of doom),

Transitions and enhancings,

And bloody ray.

The phantom-host has faded quite,

Splendor and Terror gone--

Portent or promise--and gives way

To pale, meek Dawn;

The coming, going,

Alike in wonder showing--

Alike the God,

Decreeing and commanding

The million blades that glowed,

The muster and disbanding--

Midnight and Morn.

The Released Rebel Prisoner.[18]

(June, 1865.)

Armies he's seen--the herds of war,

But never such swarms of men

As now in the Nineveh of the North--

How mad the Rebellion then!

And yet but dimly he divines

The depth of that deceit,

And superstition of vast pride

Humbled to such defeat.

Seductive shone the Chiefs in arms--

His steel the nearest magnet drew;

Wreathed with its kind, the Gulf-weed drives--

'Tis Nature's wrong they rue.

His face is hidden in his beard,

But his heart peers out at eye--

And such a heart! like mountain-pool

Where no man passes by.

He thinks of Hill--a brave soul gone;

And Ashby dead in pale disdain;

And Stuart with the Rupert-plume,

Whose blue eye never shall laugh again.

He hears the drum; he sees our boys

From his wasted fields return;

Ladies feast them on strawberries,

And even to kiss them yearn.

He marks them bronzed, in soldier-trim,

The rifle proudly borne;

They bear it for an heir-loom home,

And he--disarmed--jail-worn.

Home, home--his heart is full of it;

But home he never shall see,

Even should he stand upon the spot;

'Tis gone!--where his brothers be.

The cypress-moss from tree to tree

Hangs in his Southern land;

As weird, from thought to thought of his

Run memories hand in hand.

And so he lingers--lingers on

In the City of the Foe--

His cousins and his countrymen

Who see him listless go.

A Grave near Petersburg, Virginia.[19]

Head-board and foot-board duly placed--

Grassed in the mound between;

Daniel Drouth is the slumberer's name--

Long may his grave be green!

Quick was his way--a flash and a blow,

Full of his fire was he--

A fire of hell--'tis burnt out now--

Green may his grave long be!

May his grave be green, though he

Was a rebel of iron mould;

Many a true heart--true to the Cause,

Through the blaze of his wrath lies cold.

May his grave be green--still green

While happy years shall run;

May none come nigh to disinter

The--_Buried Gun_.

"Formerly a Slave."

An idealized Portrait, by E. Vedder, in the Spring

Exhibition of the National Academy, 1865.

The sufferance of her race is shown,

And retrospect of life,

Which now too late deliverance dawns upon;

Yet is she not at strife.

Her children's children they shall know

The good withheld from her;

And so her reverie takes prophetic cheer--

In spirit she sees the stir

Far down the depth of thousand years,

And marks the revel shine;

Her dusky face is lit with sober light,

Sibylline, yet benign.

The Apparition.

(A Retrospect.)

Convulsions came; and, where the field

Long slept in pastoral green,

A goblin-mountain was upheaved

(Sure the scared sense was all deceived),

Marl-glen and slag-ravine.

The unreserve of Ill was there,

The clinkers in her last retreat;

But, ere the eye could take it in,

Or mind could comprehension win,

It sunk!--and at our feet.

So, then, Solidity's a crust--

The core of fire below;

All may go well for many a year,

But who can think without a fear

Of horrors that happen so?

Magnanimity Baffled.

"Sharp words we had before the fight;

But--now the fight is done--

Look, here's my hand," said the Victor bold,

"Take it--an honest one!

What, holding back? I mean you well;

Though worsted, you strove stoutly, man;

The odds were great; I honor you;

Man honors man.

"Still silent, friend? can grudges be?

Yet am I held a foe?--

Turned to the wall, on his cot he lies--

Never I'll leave him so!

Brave one! I here implore your hand;

Dumb still? all fellowship fled?

Nay, then, I'll have this stubborn hand"

He snatched it--it was dead.

On the Slain Collegians.[20]

Youth is the time when hearts are large,

And stirring wars

Appeal to the spirit which appeals in turn

To the blade it draws.

If woman incite, and duty show

(Though made the mask of Cain),

Or whether it be Truth's sacred cause,

Who can aloof remain

That shares youth's ardor, uncooled by the snow

Of wisdom or sordid gain?

The liberal arts and nurture sweet

Which give his gentleness to man--

Train him to honor, lend him grace

Through bright examples meet--

That culture which makes never wan

With underminings deep, but holds

The surface still, its fitting place,

And so gives sunniness to the face

And bravery to the heart; what troops

Of generous boys in happiness thus bred--

Saturnians through life's Tempe led,

Went from the North and came from the South,

With golden mottoes in the mouth,

To lie down midway on a bloody bed.

Woe for the homes of the North,

And woe for the seats of the South;

All who felt life's spring in prime,

And were swept by the wind of their place and time--

All lavish hearts, on whichever side,

Of birth urbane or courage high,

Armed them for the stirring wars--

Armed them--some to die.

Apollo-like in pride,

Each would slay his Python--caught

The maxims in his temple taught--

Aflame with sympathies whose blaze

Perforce enwrapped him--social laws,

Friendship and kin, and by-gone days--

Vows, kisses--every heart unmoors,

And launches into the seas of wars.

What could they else--North or South?

Each went forth with blessings given

By priests and mothers in the name of Heaven;

And honor in both was chief.

Warred one for Right, and one for Wrong?

So be it; but they both were young--

Each grape to his cluster clung,

All their elegies are sung.

The anguish of maternal hearts

Must search for balm divine;

But well the striplings bore their fated parts

(The heavens all parts assign)--

Never felt life's care or cloy.

Each bloomed and died an unabated Boy;

Nor dreamed what death was--thought it mere

Sliding into some vernal sphere.

They knew the joy, but leaped the grief,

Like plants that flower ere comes the leaf--

Which storms lay low in kindly doom,

And kill them in their flush of bloom.

America.

I.

Where the wings of a sunny Dome expand

I saw a Banner in gladsome air--

Starry, like Berenice's Hair--

Afloat in broadened bravery there;

With undulating long-drawn flow,

As rolled Brazilian billows go

Voluminously o'er the Line.

The Land reposed in peace below;

The children in their glee

Were folded to the exulting heart

Of young Maternity.

II.

Later, and it streamed in fight

When tempest mingled with the fray,

And over the spear-point of the shaft

I saw the ambiguous lightning play.

Valor with Valor strove, and died:

Fierce was Despair, and cruel was Pride;

And the lorn Mother speechless stood,

Pale at the fury of her brood.

III.

Yet later, and the silk did wind

Her fair cold form;

Little availed the shining shroud,

Though ruddy in hue, to cheer or warm.

A watcher looked upon her low, and said--

She sleeps, but sleeps, she is not dead.

But in that sleep contortion showed

The terror of the vision there--

A silent vision unavowed,

Revealing earth's foundation bare,

And Gorgon in her hidden place.

It was a thing of fear to see

So foul a dream upon so fair a face,

And the dreamer lying in that starry shroud.

IV.

But from the trance she sudden broke--

The trance, or death into promoted life;

At her feet a shivered yoke,

And in her aspect turned to heaven

No trace of passion or of strife--

A clear calm look. It spake of pain,

But such as purifies from stain--

Sharp pangs that never come again--

And triumph repressed by knowledge meet,

Power dedicate, and hope grown wise,

And youth matured for age's seat--

Law on her brow and empire in her eyes.

So she, with graver air and lifted flag;

While the shadow, chased by light,

Fled along the far-drawn height,

And left her on the crag.

Verses

Inscriptive and Memorial

On the Home Guards

who perished in the Defense of Lexington, Missouri.

The men who here in harness died

Fell not in vain, though in defeat.

They by their end well fortified

The Cause, and built retreat

(With memory of their valor tried)

For emulous hearts in many an after fray--

Hearts sore beset, which died at bay.