Herman Melville
Poems from Battle Pieces
"The Conflict Of Convictions"
"A Utilitarian View Of The Monitor's Fight"
"The House-Top"
"The Swamp Angel"
"Magnanimity Baffled"
"The Martyr"
The Conflict of Convictions
(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 aeons 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' strife,
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.
Age 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.
A Utilitarian View of the Monitor's Fight
Plain be the phrase, yet apt the verse,
More ponderous than nimble;
For since grimed War here laid aside
His Orient pomp, 'twould ill befit
Overmuch to ply
The rhyme's barbaric cymbal.Hail to victory without the gaud
Of glory; zeal that needs no fans
Of banners; plain mechanic power
Plied cogently in War now placed --
Where War belongs --
Among the trades and artisans.Yet this was battle, and intense --
Beyond the strife of fleets heroic;
Deadlier, closer, calm 'mid storm;
No passion; all went on by crank,
Pivot, and screw,
And calculations of caloric.Needless to dwell; the story's known.
The ringing of those plates on plates
Still ringeth round the world --
The clangour of that blacksmiths' fray.
The anvil-din
Resounds this message from the Fates:War shall yet be, and to the end;
But war-paint shows the streaks of weather;
War yet shall be, but warriors
Are now but operatives; War's made
Less grand than Peace,
And a singe runs through lace and feather.
The House-Top
No sleep. The sultriness pervades the air
And binds the brain -a dense oppression, such
As tawny tigers feel in matted shades,
Vexing their blood and making apt for ravage.
Beneath the stars the roofy desert spreads
Vacant as Libya. All is hushed near by.
Yet fitfully from far breaks a mixed surf
Of muffled sound, the atheist roar of riot.
Yonder, where parching Sirius set in drought
Balefully glares red Arson -there -and there.
The town is taken by its rats -ship-rats
And rats of the wharves. All civil charms
And priestly spells which late held hearts in awe -
Fear-bound, subjected to a better sway
Than sway of self; these like a dream dissolve,
And man rebounds whole aeons back in nature.
Hail to the low dull rumble, dull and dead,
And ponderous drag that shakes the wall.
Wise Draco comes, deep in the midnight roll
Of black artillery; he comes, though late;
In code corroborating Calvin's creed
And cynic tyrannies of honest kings;
He comes, nor parleys; and the town, redeemed,
Gives thanks devout; nor, being thankful, heeds
The grimy slur on the Republic's faith implied,
Which holds that Man is naturally good,
And -more -is Nature's Roman, never to be scourged.
The Swamp Angel
There is a coal-black Angel
With a thick Afric lilp,
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 fright of the faces,
And downward the coming is seen;
Then the rush, and the burst, and the havoc,
And the wails and shrieks between.It comes like a 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 he 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 yeild 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 in her wild despairing--
Christ, the Forgiver, convert his mind.
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.
The Martyr
Indicative of the passion of the people on the 15th of April, 1865.
Good Friday was the day
Of the prodigy and crime,
When they killed him in his pity,
When they killed him in his prime
Of clemency and calm --
When with yearning he was filled
To redeem the evil-willed,
And, though conqueror, be kind;
But they killed him in his kindness,
In their madness and their blindness,
And they killed him from behind.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.He lieth in his blood --
The father in his face;
They have killed him, the Forgiver --
The Avenger takes his place,
The Avenger wisely stern,
Who in righteousness shall do
What the heavens call him to,
And the parricides remand;
For they killed him in his kindness,
In their madness and their blindness,
And his blood is on their hand.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.
First Posted: 2/24/2002
Last modified: 08/23/08
