Poetry of Herman Melville -- (1819 - 1891)

The Mound by the Lake

The grass shall never forget this grave.
When homeward footing it in the sun
After the weary ride by rail,
The stripling soldiers passed her door,
Wounded perchance, or wan and pale,
She left her household work undone -
Duly the wayside table spread,
With evergreens shaded, to regale
Each travel-spent and grateful one.
So warm her heart, childless, unwed,
Who like a mother comforted.

The Maldive Shark

About the Shark, phlegmatical one,
Pale sot of the Maldive sea,
The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim,
How alert in attendance be.
From his saw-pit of mouth, from his charnel of maw
They have nothing of harm to dread,
But liquidly glide on his ghastly flank
Or before his Gorgonian head;
Or lurk in the port of serrated teeth
In white triple tiers of glittering gates,
And there find a haven when peril's abroad,
An asylum in jaws of the Fates!
They are friends; and friendly they guide him to prey,
Yet never partake of the treat --
Eyes and brains to the dotard lethargic and dull,
Pale ravener of horrible meat.

Nice, Piffka - though, WHAT is that shark eating??????!!!!!!!!

I had not realised Melville wrote poetry until I was poem hunting for the portal - the shark one is in there, (as are some other fabulous ones, I think) - I had not seen the other two.

I love his prose.... and his poetry is lovely, too.

Errrr, I think the poem describes a Maldive shark eating a human. <sigh> Probably part of the "Don't Fall Overboard" advice.

I was surprised at Melville's poetry, too. I ran into "Of Rama" in the book, A Little Treasury of American Poetry, but couldn't find it on the web so I thought I'd write it out. Things just snowballed, as they do.

Melville seems most famous for his Civil War poetry.

Deb, here's one of his poems that mentions Australia. I'm not sure exactly what it means...

Southern Cross
Emblazoned bleak in austral skies --
A heaven remote, whose starry swarm
Like Science lights but cannot warm --
Translated Cross, hast thou withdrawn,
Dim paling too at every dawn,
With symbols vain once counted wise,
And gods declined to heraldries?

Estranged, estranged: can friend prove so?
Aloft, aloof, a frigid sign;
How far removed, thou Tree divine,
Whose tender fruit did reach so low --
Love apples of New-Paradise!
About the wide Australian sea
The planted nations yet to be --

When, ages hence, they lift their eyes,
Tell, what shall they retain of thee?
But class thee with Orion's sword?
In constellations unadored,
Christ and the Giant equal prize?
The atheist cycles -- must they be?
Fomenters as forefathers, we?

He is somewhat clumsy in his rhythm and rhyme, and whether he is deep or just vague... I dunno, but I like some of his images.

Because the public lost interest in his later fiction´, Melville wrote quite a lot of poetry - had to read it at school and found two books (all in English, of course) at the library in the German Navy's officer college.

LOL! I meant the picture! heehee.

I see what you mean about the rhythms etc - I used short ones for the portal. I will post a few of those here.

I like the southern cross one - I assume it is about the oddness of that symbol in southern - non-christian generally - skies - and compares it with Orion's belt - ie the constellations of the north represent long-vanished religions - and assumes the cross in the south is on its way to doing the same. Which it is, I guess - except for Africa, which seems to be christianity's only growth area...

Art

IN placid hours well-pleased we dream
Of many a brave unbodied scheme.
But form to lend, pulsed life create,
What unlike things must meet and mate:
A flame to melt--a wind to freeze;
Sad patience--joyous energies;
Humility--yet pride and scorn;
Instinct and study; love and hate;
Audacity--reverence. These must mate,
And fuse with Jacob's mystic heart,
To wrestle with the angel--Art.

Healed of My Hurt

HEALED of my hurt, I laud the inhuman Sea--
Yea, bless the Angels Four that there convene;
For healed I am even by the pitiless breath
Distilled in wholesome dew named rosmarine.

Shiloh

SKIMMING lightly, wheeling still,
The swallows fly low
Over the fields in clouded days,
The forest-field of Shiloh--
Over the field where April rain
Solaced the parched one stretched in pain
Through the pause of night
That followed the Sunday fight
Around the church of Shiloh--
The church so lone, the log-built one,
That echoed to many a parting groan
And natural prayer
Of dying foemen mingled there--
Foemen at morn, but friends at eve--
Fame or country least their care:
(What like a bullet can undeceive!)
But now they lie low,
While over them the swallows skim,
And all is hushed at Shiloh.

Piffka - where did you get that southern cross poem? I cannot find it on the web.

The Berg (A Dream) (rather Coleridgean!)


I saw a ship of material build
(Her standards set, her brave apparel on)
Directed as by madness mere
Against a solid iceberg steer,
Nor budge it, though the infactuate ship went down.
The impact made huge ice-cubes fall
Sullen in tons that crashed the deck;
But that one avalanche was all--
No other movement save the foundering wreck.

Along the spurs of ridges pale,
Not any slenderest shaft and frail,
A prism over glass-green gorges lone,
Toppled; or lace or traceries fine,
Nor pendant drops in grot or mine
Were jarred, when the stunned ship went down.
Nor sole the gulls in cloud that wheeled
Circling one snow-flanked peak afar,
But nearer fowl the floes that skimmed
And crystal beaches, felt no jar.
No thrill transmitted stirred the lock
Of jack-straw neddle-ice at base;
Towers indermined by waves--the block
Atilt impending-- kept their place.
Seals, dozing sleek on sliddery ledges
Slipt never, when by loftier edges
Through the inertia overthrown,
The impetuous ship in bafflement went down.

Hard Berg (methought), so cold, so vast,
With mortal damps self-overcast;
Exhaling still thy dankish breath--
Adrift dissolving, bound for death;
Though lumpish thou, a lumbering one--
A lumbering lubbard loitering slow,
Impingers rue thee ad go slow
Sounding thy precipice below,
Nor stir the slimy slug that sprawls
Along thy dead indifference of walls.

Good one, Deb... Coleridgean, yep! I had to type in "The Southern Cross"... no copying and pasting for that or "Of Rama," drat it.

Here's another poem about art, maybe this painting (maybe not).




The Bench of Boors

In bed I muse on Tenier's boors,
Embrowned and beery losels all:
A wakeful brain
Elaborates pain:
Within low doors the slugs of boors
Laze and yawn and doze again.

In dreams they doze, the drowsy boors,
Their hazy hovel warm and small:
Thought's ampler bound
But chill is found:
Within low doors the basking boors
Snugly hug the ember-mound.

Sleepless, I see the slumberous boors
Their blurred eyes blink, their eyelids fall:
Thought's eager sight
Aches -- overbright!
Within low doors the boozy boors
Cat-naps take in pipe-bowl light.

________
Notes

1] Tenier: David Teniers the Younger (1610-90), a Netherlands painter whose work Melville had seen when he was in Amsterdam at the museum.

2] losels: good-for-nothings.

Here are some excerpts from "Clarel," a 600-page poem about Melville's musings during a trip to the Holy Land.

Yes, long as children feel affright
In darkness, men shall fear a God;
And long as daisies yield delight
Shall see His footprints in the sod.
Is't ignorance? This ignorant state
Science doth but elucidate --
Deepen, enlarge. But though 'twere made
Demonstrable that God is not --
What then? It would not change this lot:
The ghost would haunt, nor could be laid.

Yea, ape and angel, strife and old debate --
The harps of heaven and the dreary gongs of hell;
Science the feud can only aggravate --
No umpire she betwixt the chimes and knell:
The running battle of the star and clod
Shall run for ever -- if there be no God.

But through such strange illusions have they passed
Who in life's pilgrimage have baffled striven --
Even death may prove unreal at the last,
And stoics be astounded into heaven.

Then keep thy heart, though yet but ill-resigned --
Clarel, thy heart, the issues there but mind;
That like the crocus budding through the snow --
That like a swimmer rising from the deep --
That like a burning secret which doth go
Even from the bosom that would hoard and keep;
Emerge thou mayst from the last whelming sea,
And prove that death but routs life into victory.

Melville's Poetry is mostly about the Civil War, one of my least favorite eras in history.

THE PORTENT
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 war.

Notes for non-Americans:
John Brown was born on May 9, 1800 in Torrington, Connecticut and grew up filled with heavy anti-slavery sentiment. This, combined with personal observations of the maltreatment of blacks and the influence of Calvinism, started John Brown on his crusade to abolish slavery. Due to his anti-slavery campaigns, his young family struggled to make any sacrifices necessary to further the abolitionist cause.

After such bloody encounters as Pottawamie Creek in Kansas, John Brown began to amass arms and make battle plans in earnest for a full-fledged invasion of the South. This plan was to culminate in the raid on Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, but once John Brown and his followers had captured the arsenal, they found themselves trapped. They were then captured and turned over to state authorities. John Brown was found guilty and sentenced to death. He was hung in Charleston on Dec. 2, 1859.

Piffka - might I ask you a mighty favour????? Pretty please?

Could you possibly indicate which Melvilles that are here you could not find on the net - and - pleeeeeease could you check those ones to see that they are 100% accurate? If you would do this, I can add them to the portal - and that and here will be the places people are sent if they search for them.


Begging prettily.....

I've plowed through Hershel Parker's magisterial (and that's putting it mildly) two-volume Melville biography and was happy to read about his poetry. I majored in lit and focussed on Melville, but we never tackled his poetry. Glad to see it coming to light here. Thanks, Piffka!

D. No problem. I checked and found a couple of minor errors (a comma & a question mark missing). I added some spaces to break up the lines, which I have now taken out. The only inaccuracies that I couldn't fix are three line indentations in "Of Rama."

Only "Of Rama" & "Southern Cross" were typed in.


Wow, D'a! You focused on Melville and hadn't read his poetry? I guess he really is a minor, minor poet, poor fella.

Yes - and he IS clumsy - but I like his stuff....