The Portent (1859)

HANGING from the beam,

Slowly swaying (such the law),

Gaunt the shadow on the 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.

Herman Melville

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 burning 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 dishartened 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 storms we feel:

The hemlock shakes in the rafter, the oak in the driving keel.

Herman Melville

Shiloh, A Requiem (1862)

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.

Herman Melville

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.

Herman Melville

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.

Herman Melville

The Berg

(A Dream)

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 ovrthrown,

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.

Herman Melville

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 attendence be.

From his saw-pit mouth, from his charnel of maw

The 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.

Herman Melville