4 In the swamp, in secluded recesses, The hermit, withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements, Sings by himself a song. Song of the bleeding throat! Death's outlet song of life-(for well, dear brother, I know If thou wast not gifted to sing, thou would'st surely die.) 5 Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities, Amid lanes, and through old woods, (where lately the violets peep'd from the ground, spotting the gray débris ;) Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes-passing the endless grass; Passing the yellow-spear'd wheat, every grain from its shroud in the darkbrown fields uprising; Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards; Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave, Night and day journeys a coffin. 6 Coffin that passes through lanes and streets, Through day and night, with the great cloud darkening the land, With the pomp of the inloop'd flags, with the cities draped in black, With the show of the States themselves, as of crape-veil'd women, standing, With processions long and winding, and the flambeaus of the night, With the countless torches lit-with the silent sea of faces, and the unbared heads, With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces, With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong and solemn ; With all the mournful voices of the dirges, pour'd around the coffin, The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs-Where amid these you jour ney, With the tolling, tolling bells' perpetual clang; Here! coffin that slowly passes, I give you my sprig of lilac. 7 (Nor for you, for one, alone; Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring: For fresh as the morning-thus would I carol a song for you, O sane and sacred death. All over bouquets of roses, O death! I cover you over with roses and early lilies; But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first, Copious, I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes; With loaded arms I come, pouring for you, For you, and the coffins all of you, O death.) 8 O western orb, sailing the heaven! as a month since we walk'd, As we walk'd up and down in the dark blue so mystic, As we walk'd in silence the transparent shadowy night, As I saw you had something to tell, as you bent to me night after night, As you droop'd from the sky low down, as if to my side, (while the other stars all look'd on;) As we wander'd together the solemn night, (for something, I know not what, kept me from sleep;) Pictures of growing spring, and farms, and homes, With the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the gray smoke lucid and bright, With floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent, sinking sun, burning, expanding the air; With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green leaves of the trees prolific; In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river, with a winddapple here and there; With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the sky, and shadows; And the city at hand, with dwellings so dense, and stacks of chimneys, And all the scenes of life, and the workshops, and the workmen homeward returning. ΙΟ O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved? And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone? And what shall my perfume be, for the grave of him I love? Sea-winds, blown from east and west, Blown from the eastern sea, and blown from the western sea, till there on the prairies meeting: These, and with these, and the breath of my chant, I perfume the grave of him I love. II O what shall I hang on the chamber walls? And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls, To adorn the burial-house of him I love? 12 Lo! body and soul! this land! Mighty Manhattan, with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships; The varied and ample land-the South and the North in the light-Ohio's shores, and flashing Missouri, And ever the far-spreading prairies, cover'd with grass and corn. Lo! the most excellent sun, so calm and haughty; The violet and purple morn, with justfelt breezes; The gentle, soft-born, measureless light; The miracle, spreading, bathing all-the fulfill'd noon; The coming eve, delicious-the welcome night, and the stars, Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land. Now while I sat in the day, and look'd forth, In the close of the day, with its light, and the fields of spring, and the farmer preparing his crops, In the large unconscious scenery of my land, with its lakes and forests, In the heavenly aerial beauty, (after the perturb'd winds, and the storms;) Under the arching heavens of the after noon swift passing, and the voices of children and women, The many-moving sea-tides,-and I saw the ships how they sail'd, And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy with labor, And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with its meals and minutia of daily usages; And the streets, how their throbbings throbb'd, and the cities pent-lo! then and there, Falling upon them all, and among them all, enveloping me with the rest, Appear'd the cloud, appear'd the long black trail; And I knew Death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death. 15 Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me, And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me, And I in the middle, as with companions, and as holding the hands of companions, I fled forth to the hiding receiving night, that talks not, Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness, To the solemn shadowy cedars, and ghostly pines so still. And the singer so shy to the rest receiv'd me; The gray-brown bird I know, receiv'd us comrades three; And he sang what seem'd the carol of death, and a verse for him I love. From deep secluded recesses, From the fragrant cedars, and the ghostly pines so still, Came the carol of the bird. And the charm of the carol rapt me, As I held, as if by their hands, my comrades in the night; And the voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird. HERMAN MELVILLE (1819-1891) From MOBY Dick; or, The White Whale Captain Ahab, of the Pequod, cherished madly the one purpose in life or death of killing Moby Dick, the great white whale that, on a previous voyage, had taken off his leg. The Pequod sailed from Nantucket on the longest of voyages, round the Horn into the Pacific, to the Japanese whaling grounds and the South Seas. Captain Ahab swore the three mates, the three harpooners, and the crew to vengeance on Moby Dick. The killing of other whales did not in the least divert him from his maniacal purpose. Thoughts of home and of his young wife Mary and his boy, the child of his old age, could not deter him. Reports from other vessels of encounters with Moby Dick, and of the deaths thereby, only made him abandon sleep and remain on deck both night and day, driving the Pequod on in the hope of meeting the white monster. Fateful omens portended misfortune. A sea-hawk carried off his hat as he hung in a basket raised aloft, to scan the sea. Fedallah, a mysterious unsleeping Parsee of the crew, foretold that he should die, after the Parsee went and was seen again; but that neither hearse nor coffin could be his; that ere he could die two hearses must verily be seen by him on the sea, the first not made by mortal hands, and the visible wood of the last one grown in America; and that hemp alone could kill him. At last he sighted Moby Dick. The golden doubloon that had hung on the mast as a reward to the man who first saw the white whale was his own; but he left it where it was, for on that day Moby Dick destroyed with his jaws the small boat in which Captain Ahab set forth to harpoon him, and escaped, without harming the two other boats that had been lowered. "Men," said Ahab, when he was brought back on board, "this gold is mine, for I earned it; but I shall let it abide here till the White Whale is dead; and then, whosoever of ye first raises him, upon the day he shall be killed, this gold is that man's; and if on that day I shall again raise him, then, ten times its sum shall be divided among all of ye!" With the sagacity of forty years' experience, Ahab drove his ship on in the wake of the whale through the night, and presently in the morning the lookouts at the mast-heads shouted "There she blows!-she blows!-she blows!-right ahead!" But the men in their headlong eagerness had mistaken some other thing for the whale-spout; for hardly had Ahab been raised again in his basket when "the triumphant halloo of thirty buckskin lungs was heard, as much nearer to the ship than the place of the imaginary jet, less than a mile ahead-Moby Dick bodily burst into view! . . . "There she breaches! there she breaches!' was the cry, as in his immeasurable bravadoes the White Whale tossed himself salmon-like to Heaven." This time from all three of the lowered boats irons went into Moby Dick; but he wrecked all three, and then dived down. The Pequod picked up her men—all but the Parsee and the chase went on, through the second night. The Chase-Third Day THE morning of the third day dawned fair and fresh, and once more the solitary night-man at the fore-masthead was relieved by crowds of the daylight lookouts, who dotted every mast and almost every spar. "D'ye see him?" cried Ahab; but the whale was not yet in sight. "In his infallible wake, though; but follow that wake, that's all. Helm there; steady, as thou goest, and hast been going. What a lovely day again! were it a new-made world, and made for a summer-house to the angels, and this morning the first of its throwing open to them, a fairer day could not dawn upon that world. Here's food for thought, had Ahab time to think, but Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels, that's tingling enough for mortal man! to think's audacity. God only has that right and privilege. Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that. And yet, I've sometimes thought my brain was very calm-frozen calm, this old skull cracks so, like a glass in which the contents turn to ice, and shiver it. And still this hair is growing now; this moment growing, and heat must breed it; but no, it's like that sort of common grass that will grow anywhere, between the earthly clefts of Greenland ice or in Vesuvius lava. How the wild winds blow it; they whip it about me as the torn shreds of split sails lash the tossed ship they cling to. A vile wind that has no doubt blown ere this through prison corridors and cells, and wards of hospitals, and ventilated them, and now comes blowing hither as innocent as fleeces. Out upon it!— it's tainted. Were I the wind, I'd blow no more on such a wicked, miserable world. I'd crawl somewhere to a cave, and slink there. And yet, 'tis a noble and heroic thing, the wind! who ever conquered it? In every fight it has the last and bitterest blow. Run tilting at it, and you but run through it. Ha! a coward wind that strikes stark naked nien, but will not stand to receive a single blow. Even Ahab is a braver thing-a nobler thing than that. Would now the wind but had a body; but all the things that most exasperate and outrage mortal man, all these things are bodiless, but only bodiless as objects, not as agents. There's a most special, a most cunning, oh, a most malicious difference! And yet, I say again, and swear it now, that there's something all glorious and gracious in the wind. These warm Trade Winds, at least, that in the clear heavens blow straight on, in strong and steadfast, vigorous mildness; and veer not from their mark, however the baser currents of the sea may turn and tack, and mightiest Mississippis of the land shift and swerve about, uncertain where to go at last. And by the eternal Poles! these same Trades that so directly blow my good ship on; these Trades, or something like them-something so unchangeable, and full as strong, blow my keeled soul along! To it! Aloft there ! What d'ye see?" "Nothing, sir." "Nothing! and noon at hand! The doubloon goes a-begging! See the sun! Aye, aye, it must be so. I've oversailed him. How, got the start? Aye, he's chasing me now; not I, him—that's bad; I might have known it, too. Fool! the lines-the harpoons he's towing. Aye, |