John Marr and Other Sailors

University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Zea E-Books in American Studies Zea E-Books

1888

Herman Melville

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Herman Melville Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln Faculty Publications, UNL Libraries

University of Nebraska - Lincoln Year 

John Marr and Other Sailors: An Online Electronic ‘Facsimile’ Text of the First Edition (1888)

Herman Melville∗ Paul Royster (editor & depositor)†

∗ †University of Nebraska-Lincoln, [email protected] This paper is posted at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libraryscience/18

JOHN MARR

AND OTHER SAILORS

WITH SOME SEA-PIECES

NEW-YORK THE DE VINNE PRESS 1888

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

INSCRIPTION EPISTOLARY...... 1 JOHN MARR...... 11

BRIDEGROOM DICK...... 27

TOM DEADLIGHT...... 53 JACK ROY ...... 59

SEA-PIECES.

THE HAGLETS ...... 65

Copyright, 1888, by THE ÆOLIAN HARP ...... 79 T HEO. L. D E V INNE & C O . TO THE MASTER OF THE “METEOR” ...... 85 FAR OFF-SHORE ...... 86

THE MAN-OF-WAR HAWK...... 86 THE FIGURE-HEAD ...... 87 THE GOOD CRAFT “SNOW-BIRD”...... 88 OLD COUNSEL ...... 89 THE TUFT OF KELP...... 90 THE MALDIVE S HARK ...... 90 TO NED...... 91 CROSSING THE TROPICS ...... 93 THE BERG ...... 95 THE ENVIABLE ISLES ...... 97

PEBBLES.

I–VII ...... 101

INSCRIPTION EPISTOLARY

W. C. R.

HEALTH AND CONTENT :

Hilary, my companionable acquaintance, dur- ing an afternoon stroll under the trees along the higher bluffs of our Riverside Park last June, entertained me with one of those clever little theories, for the originating and formulat- ing whereof he has a singular aptitude. He had but recently generalized it—so, at least, I inferred —from certain subtler particulars which, in the instances of sundry individuals, he flattered himself his perspicacity had enabled him to discern.

2 Inscription Epistolary. Inscription Epistolary. 3

Let me communicate to you this theory ; not allegiance all Engish,—this writer, I am credibly that I imagine you will hail it as a rare intellect- informed, is in his birthplace a New-Worlder ; ual acquisition ; hardly that, but because I am ay, first looked out upon life from a window here much mistaken if it do not attract your personal of our island of Manhattan, nor very far from interest, however little it may otherwise, and with the site of my place in Broadway, by Jove !” other people, win consideration or regard. Now, Hilary is that rare bird, a man at once Briefly put, it is this. Letting alone less famil- genial and acute. Genial, I mean, without shar- iar nationalities, an American born in England, ing much in mere gregariousness, which, with or an Englishman born in America, each in his some, passes for a sort of geniality ; and acute, natural make-up retains through life, and will though lacking more or less in cautionary self- some way evince, an intangible something im- skepticism. No wonder then that, however pleas- bibed with his mother’s milk from the soil of ing and instructive be Hilary’s companionship, his nativity. and much as I value the man, yet as touching But for a signal illustration hereof, whom, think more than one of his shrewder speculations I have you, he cites ? Well, look into any mirror at hand been reluctantly led to distrust a little that pene- and you will see the gentleman. Yes, Hilary trative perspicacity of his, a quality immoderately thinks he perceives in the nautical novels of developed in him, and perhaps (who knows ?), W. C. R. an occasional flavor as if the honest developed by his business ; for he is an optician, mid-sea brine, their main constituent, were im- daily having to do with the microscope, telescope, pregnated with a dash of the New World’s allu- and other inventions for sharpening and extend- vium—such, say, as is discharged by our Father ing our natural sight, thus enabling us mortals of Waters into the Gulf of Mexico. “Natural (as I once heard an eccentric put it) liberally to enough,” he observes ; “for, though a country- enlarge the field of our original and essential man of the Queen,—his parentage, home, and ignorance.

4 Inscription Epistolary. Inscription Epistolary. 5

In a word, my excellent friend’s private little exclaimed, each after his own fashion, something theory, while, like many a big and bruited one, to this effect : The very spit of the brine in our not without a fancifully plausible aspect com- faces ! What writer, so thoroughly as this one, mending it to the easy of belief, is yet, in my knows the sea, and the blue water of it ; the sailor humble judgment,—though I would not hint as and the heart of him ; the ship, too, and the sail- much to him for the world,—made up in no small ing and handling of a ship ? Besides, to his part of one element inadmissible in sound phi- knowledge he adds invention. And, withal, in losophy — namely, moonshine. his broader humane quality he shares the spirit As to his claim of finding signal evidence for it of Richard H. Dana, a true poet’s son, our own in the novels aforementioned, that is another admirable “Man before the Mast.” matter. That, I am inclined to think, is little else Well, in view of those unanimous verdicts than the amiable illusion of a zealous patriot summed up in the foregoing condensed delivery, eager to appropriate anything that in any with what conscientious satisfaction did I but just department may tend to reflect added luster now, in the heading of this inscription, salute you, upon his beloved country . W. C. R., by running up your colors at my fore. But, dismissing theory, let me come to a fact, Would that the craft thus embravened were one and put it fact-wise ; that is to say, a bit bluntly : of some tonnage, so that the flag might be carried By the suffrages of seamen and landsmen alike, on a loftier spar, commanding an ampler horizon The Wreck of the Grosvenor entitles the author to of your recognizing friends. the naval crown in current literature. That book But the pleasure I take in penning these lines led the series of kindred ones by the same hand ; is such that, did a literary inscription imply aught it is the flag-ship, and to name it implies the akin to any bestowment, say, or benefit,—which it fleet. is so very far indeed from implying,—then, sinner Upon the Grosvenor’s first appearance—in these though I am, I should be tempted to repeat that waters, I was going to say—all competent judges

6 Inscription Epistolary. Inscription Epistolary. 7 divine apothegm which, were it repeated forever, type. For personal feeling—the printed page is would never stale : “It is more blessed to give hardly the place for reiterating that. So I close than to receive.” And tho’ by the world at large here as I began, wishing you from my heart the so unworldly a maxim receives a more hospitable most precious things I know of in this world— welcome at the ear than in the heart,—and no Health and Content. wonder, considering the persistent deceptiveness of so many things mundane,—nevertheless, in one province,—and I mean no other one than literature,—not every individual, I think, at least not every one whose years ought to discharge him from the minor illusions, will dispute it, who has had experience alike in receiving and giving, in one suggestive form or other, sincere contemporary praise. And what, essentially, is such praise ? Little else indeed than a less ineloquent form of recognition. That these thoughts are no spurious ones, never mind from whomsoever proceeding, one naturally appeals to the author of The Wreck of the Gros- venor, who, in his duality as a commended novelist and liberal critic in his more especial department, may rightly be deemed an authority well qualified to determine. Thus far as to matters which may be put into

JOHN MARR

AND OTHER SAILORS.

JOHN MARR.

OHN MARR, toward the close of the last cent- J ury born in America of a mother unknown, and from boyhood up to maturity a sailor under divers flags, disabled at last from further mari- time life by a crippling wound received at close quarters with pirates of the Keys, eventually be- takes himself for a livelihood to less active em- ployment ashore. There, too, he transfers his rambling disposition acquired as a seafarer. After a variety of removals, at first as a sail- maker from sea-port to sea-port, then adventur- ously inland as a rough bench-carpenter, he, finally, in the last-named capacity, settles down about the year 1838 upon what was then a frontier-prairie, sparsely sprinkled with small oak- groves and yet fewer log-houses of a little colony

12 John Marr and Other Sailors. John Marr. 13 but recently from one of our elder inland States. one glad enough to get it, and dwells with the Here, putting a period to his rovings, he marries. household. Ere long a fever, the bane of new settlements While the acuter sense of his bereavement be- on teeming loam, and whose sallow livery was comes mollified by time, the void at heart abides. certain to show itself, after an interval, in the Fain, if possible, would he fill that void by culti- complexions of too many of these people, carries vating social relations yet nearer than before with off his young wife and infant child. In one a people whose lot he purposes sharing to the end coffin, put together by his own hands, they are —relations superadded to that mere work-a-day committed with meager rites to the earth—an- bond arising from participation in the same out- other mound, though a small one, in the wide ward hardships, making reciprocal helpfulness a prairie, nor far from where the mound-builders matter of course. But here, and nobody to blame, of a race only conjecturable had left their pottery he is obstructed. and bones, one common clay, under a strange ter- More familiarly to consort, men of a practical race serpentine in form. turn must sympathetically converse, and upon With an honest stillness in his general mien— topics of real life. But, whether as to persons or swarthy and black-browed, with eyes that could events, one cannot always be talking about the soften or flash, but never harden, yet disclosing present, much less speculating about the future ; at times a melancholy depth—this kinless man one must needs recur to the past, which, with the had affections which, once placed, not readily mass of men, where the past is in any personal could be dislodged or resigned to a substituted way a common inheritance, supplies to most prac- object. Being now arrived at middle-life, he re- tical natures the basis of sympathetic communion. solves never to quit the soil that holds the only But the past of John Marr was not the past of beings ever connected with him by love in the these pioneers. Their hands had rested on the family tie. His log-house he lets to a new-comer, plow-tail, his upon the ship’s helm. They knew

14 John Marr and Other Sailors. John Marr. 15 but their own kind and their own usages ; to him these hard-working endurers of the dispiriting had been revealed something of the checkered malaria,—men to whom a holiday never came,— globe. So limited unavoidably was the mental and they had too much of uprightness and no art reach, and by consequence the range of sympathy, at all or desire to affect what they did not really in this particular band of domestic emigrants, feel. At a corn-husking, their least grave of hereditary tillers of the soil, that the ocean, but a gatherings, did the lone-hearted mariner seek to hearsay to their fathers, had now through yet divert his own thoughts from sadness, and in deeper inland removal become to themselves little some degree interest theirs, by adverting to aught more than a rumor traditional and vague. removed from the crosses and trials of their per- They were a staid people ; staid through habitu- sonal surroundings, naturally enough he would ation to monotonous hardship ; ascetics by neces- slide into some marine story or picture, but would sity not less than through moral bias ; nearly all soon recoil upon himself and be silent, finding no of them sincerely, however narrowly, religious. encouragement to proceed. Upon one such occa- They were kindly at need, after their fashion ; sion an elderly man—a blacksmith, and at Sunday but to a man wonted—as John Marr in his pre- gatherings an earnest exhorter—honestly said to vious homeless sojournings could not but have him, “Friend, we know nothing of that here.” been—to the free-and-easy tavern-clubs affording Such unresponsiveness in one’s fellow-creatures cheap recreation of an evening in certain old and set apart from factitious life, and by their voca- comfortable sea-port towns of that time, and yet tion—in those days little helped by machinery— more familiar with the companionship afloat of standing, as it were, next of kin to Nature ; this, the sailors of the same period, something was to John Marr, seemed of a piece with the apathy lacking. That something was geniality, the flower of Nature herself as envisaged to him here on a of life springing from some sense of joy in it, prairie where none but the perished mound- build- more or less. This their lot could not give to ers had as yet left a durable mark.

16 John Marr and Other Sailors. John Marr. 17

The remnant of Indians thereabout—all but ex- on this prairie. “It is the bed of a dried-up sea,” terminated in their recent and final war with reg- said the companionless sailor—no geologist—to ular white troops, a war waged by the Red Men himself, musing at twilight upon the fixed undu- for their native soil and natural rights—had been lations of that immense alluvial expanse bounded coerced into the occupancy of wilds not very far only by the horizon, and missing there the stir beyond the Mississippi—wilds then, but now the that, to alert eyes and ears, animates at all times seats of municipalities and States. Prior to that, the apparent solitudes of the deep. the bisons, once streaming countless in proces- But a scene quite at variance with one’s ante- sional herds, or browsing as in an endless battle- cedents may yet prove suggestive of them. Hooped line over these vast aboriginal pastures, had round by a level rim, the prairie was to John Marr retreated, dwindled in number, before the hunt- a reminder of ocean. ers, in main a race distinct from the agricultural With some of his former shipmates, chums on pioneers, though generally their advance-guard. certain cruises, he had contrived, prior to this last Such a double exodus of man and beast left the and more remote removal, to keep up a little corre- plain a desert, green or blossoming indeed, but spondence at odd intervals. But from tidings of almost as forsaken as the Siberian Obi. Save the anybody or any sort he, in common with the other prairie-hen, sometimes startled from its lurking- settlers, was now cut off ; quite cut off, except place in the rank grass; and, in their migratory from such news as might be conveyed over the season, pigeons, high overhead on the wing, in grassy billows by the last-arrived prairie-schooner— dense multitudes eclipsing the day like a pass- the vernacular term, in those parts and times, for ing storm-cloud ; save these—there being no wide the emigrant-wagon arched high over with sail- woods with their underwood—birds were strangely cloth and voyaging across the vast champaign. few. There was no reachable post-office as yet ; not even Blank stillness would for hours reign unbroken the rude little receptive box with lid and leather 3

18 John Marr and Other Sailors. John Marr. 19 hinges, set up at convenient intervals on a stout by the sun. In early midsummer, even going but stake along some solitary green way, affording a from one log-encampment to the next, a journey perch for birds, and which, later in the uninter- it might be of hours or good part of a day, travel mitting advance of the frontier, would perhaps was much like navigation. In some more enriched decay into a mossy monument, attesting yet an- depressions between the long, green, graduated other successive overleaped limit of civilized life ; swells, smooth as those of ocean becalmed receiv- a life which in America can to-day hardly be said ing and subduing to its own tranquillity the vo- to have any western bound but the ocean that luminous surge raised by some far-off hurricane washes Asia. Throughout these plains, now in of days previous, here one would catch the first places overpopulous with towns overopulent ; indication of advancing strangers either in the sweeping plains, elsewhere fenced off in every distance, as a far sail at sea, by the glistening direction into flourishing farms—pale townsmen white canvas of the wagon, the wagon itself wading and hale farmers alike, in part, the descendants through the rank vegetation and hidden by it, or, of the first sallow settlers ; a region that half a failing that, when near to, in the ears of the team, century ago produced little for the sustenance peeking, if not above the tall tiger-lilies, yet above of man, but to-day launching its superabundant the yet taller grass. wheat-harvest on the world ; —of this prairie, now Luxuriant, this wilderness ; but, to its denizen, a everywhere intersected with wire and rail, hardly friend left behind anywhere in the world seemed can it be said that at the period here written of not alone absent to sight, but an absentee from there was so much as a traceable road. To the existence. long-distance traveler the oak-groves, wide apart, Though John Marr’s shipmates could not all and varying in compass and form ; these, with have departed life, yet as subjects of meditation recent settlements, yet more widely separate, of- they were like phantoms of the dead. As the fered some landmarks ; but otherwise he steered growing sense of his environment threw him

20 John Marr and Other Sailors. John Marr. 21 more and more upon retrospective musings, these Taking things as fated merely, phantoms, next to those of his wife and child, be- Child-like though the world ye spanned ; came spiritual companions, losing something of Nor holding unto life too dearly, their first indistinctness and putting on at last Ye who hold your lives in hand— a dim semblance of mute life ; and they were lit Skimmers, who on oceans four by that aureola circling over any object of the Petrels were, and larks ashore. affections in the past for reunion with which an imaginative heart passionately yearns. O, not from memory lightly flung, Forgot, like strains no more availing, He invokes these visionary ones,—striving, as The heart to music haughtier strung ; it were, to get into verbal communion with them, Nay, frequent near me, never staleing, or, under yet stronger illusion, reproaching them Whose good feeling kept ye young. for their silence :— Like tides that enter creek or stream, Ye come, ye visit me, or seem Swimming out from seas of faces, Alien myriads memory traces, Since as in night’s deck-watch ye show, To enfold me in a dream ! Why, lads, so silent here to me, Your watchmate of times long ago ? I yearn as ye. But rafts that strain, Parted, shall they lock again ? Once, for all the darkling sea, Twined we were, entwined, then riven, You your voices raised how clearly, Ever to new embracements driven, Striking in when tempest sung ; Shifting gulf-weed of the main ! Hoisting up the storm-sail cheerly, And how if one here shift no more, Life is storm—let storm ! you rung. Lodged by the flinging surge ashore ?

22 John Marr and Other Sailors. John Marr. 23

Nor less, as now, in eve’s decline, And summoning trumps might vainly call, Your shadowy fellowship is mine. And booming guns implore— Ye float around me, form and feature :— A beat, a heart-beat musters all, Tattooings, ear-rings, love-locks curled ; One heart-beat at heart-core. Barbarians of man’s simpler nature, It musters. But to clasp, retain ; Unworldly servers of the world. To see you at the halyards main— Yea, present all, and dear to me, To hear your chorus once again ! Though shades, or scouring China’s sea.

Whither, whither, merchant-sailors, Whitherward now in roaring gales ? Competing still, ye huntsman-whalers, In leviathan’s wake what boat prevails ? And man-of-war’s men, whereaway ? If now no dinned drum beat to quarters On the wilds of midnight waters— Foemen looming through the spray ; Do yet your gangway lanterns, streaming, Vainly strive to pierce below, When, tilted from the slant plank gleaming, A brother you see to darkness go ?

But, gunmates lashed in shotted canvas, If where long watch-below ye keep, Never the shrill “All hands up hammocks !” Breaks the spell that charms your sleep,

BRIDEGROOM DICK.

BRIDEGROOM DICK

(1876.)

UNNING ourselves in October on a day S Balmy as spring, though the year was in decay, I lading my pipe, she stirring her tea, My old woman she says to me, “Feel ye, old man, how the season mellows ?” And why should I not, blessed heart alive, Here mellowing myself, past sixty-five, To think o’ the May-time o’ pennoned young fellows This stripped old hulk here for years may survive.

Ere yet, long ago, we were spliced, Bonny Blue, (Silvery it gleams down the moon-glade o’ time, Ah, sugar in the bowl and berries in the prime !) Coxswain I o’ the Commodore’s crew— 27

28 John Marr and Other Sailors. Bridegroom Dick. 29

Under me the fellows that manned his fine gig, His coxswain late, so the Commodore’s pet. Spinning him ashore, a king in full fig. Ay, and in night-watches long and weary, Chirrupy even when crosses rubbed me, Bored nigh to death with the naval etiquette, Bridegroom Dick lieutenants dubbed me. Yearning, too, for fun, some younker, a cadet, Pleasant at a yarn, Bob o’ Linkum in a song, Dropping for time each vain bumptious trick, Diligent in duty and nattily arrayed, Boy-like would unbend to Bridegroom Dick. Favored I was, wife, and fleeted right along ; But a limit there was—a check, d’ ye see : And though but a tot for such a tall grade, Those fine young aristocrats knew their degree. A high quartermaster at last I was made. Well, stationed aft where their lordships keep,— Seldom going forward excepting to sleep,— All this, old lassie, you have heard before, I, boozing now on by-gone years, But you listen again for the sake e’en o’ me ; My betters recall along with my peers. No babble stales o’ the good times o’ yore Recall them ? Wife, but I see them plain : To Joan, if Darby the babbler be. Alive, alert, every man stirs again.

Ay, and again on the lee-side pacing, Babbler ?—O’ what ? Addled brains, they forget ! My spy-glass carrying, a truncheon in show, O—quartermaster I ; yes, the signals set, Turning at the taffrail, my footsteps retracing, Hoisted the ensign, mended it when frayed, Proud in my duty, again methinks I go. Polished up the binnacle, minded the helm, And Dave, Dainty Dave, I mark where he stands, And prompt every order blithely obeyed. Our trim sailing-master, to time the high-noon, To me would the officers say a word cheery— That thingumbob sextant perplexing eyes and Break through the starch o’ the quarter-deck hands, realm; Squinting at the sun, or twigging o’ the moon ;

30 John Marr and Other Sailors. Bridegroom Dick. 31

Then, touching his cap to Old Chock-a-Block The middies they ducked to the man who had Commanding the quarter-deck,—“Sir, twelve messed o’clock.” With Decatur in the gun-room, or forward pressed Fighting beside Perry, Hull, Porter, and the rest. Where sails he now, that trim sailing-master, Slender, yes, as the ship’s sky-s’l pole ? Humped veteran o’ the Heart-o’-Oak war, Dimly I mind me of some sad disaster— Moored long in haven where the old heroes are, Dainty Dave was dropped from the navy-roll ! Never on you did the iron-clads jar ! And ah, for old Lieutenant Chock-a-Block— Your open deck when the boarder assailed, Fast, wife, chock-fast to death’s black dock ! The frank old heroic hand-to-hand then availed. Buffeted about the obstreperous ocean, Fleeted his life, if lagged his promotion. But where ’s Guert Gan ? Still heads he the van ? Little girl, they are all, all gone, I think, As before Vera-Cruz, when he dashed splashing Leaving Bridegroom Dick here with lids that through wink. The blue rollers sunned, in his brave gold-and- blue, Where is Ap Catesby ? The fights fought of yore And, ere his cutter in keel took the strand, Famed him, and laced him with epaulets, and more. Aloft waved his sword on the hostile land ! But fame is a wake that after-wakes cross, Went up the cheering, the quick chanticleering ; And the waters wallow all, and laugh Where ’s All hands vying—all colors flying : the loss ? “Cock-a-doodle-doo !” and “Row, boys, row !” But John Bull’s bullet in his shoulder bearing “Hey, Starry Banner !” “Hi, Santa Anna !”— Ballasted Ap in his long seafaring. Old Scott’s young dash at Mexico.

32 John Marr and Other Sailors. Bridegroom Dick. 33

Fine forces o’ the land, fine forces o’ the sea, And partners were taken, and the red dance began, Fleet, army, and flotilla—tell, heart o’ me, War’s red dance o’ death !—Well, we, to a man, Tell, if you can, whereaway now they be ! We sailors o’ the North, wife, how could we lag ?— Strike with your kin, and you stick to the flag ! But ah, how to speak of the hurricane unchained— But to sailors o’ the South that easy way was The Union’s strands parted in the hawser over- barred. strained ; To some, dame, believe (and I speak o’ what I Our flag blown to shreds, anchors gone altogether— know), The dashed fleet o’ States in Secession’s foul Wormwood the trial and the Uzzite’s black shard ; weather. And the faithfuller the heart, the crueller the throe. Lost in the smother o’ that wide public stress, Duty ? It pulled with more than one string, In hearts, private hearts, what ties there were This way and that, and anyhow a sting. snapped! The flag and your kin, how be true unto both ? Tell, Hal—vouch, Will, o’ the ward-room mess, If one plight ye keep, then ye break the other On you how the riving thunder-bolt clapped. troth. With a bead in your eye and beads in your glass, But elect here they must, though the casuists And a grip o’ the flipper, it was part and pass : were out ; “Hal, must it be ? Well, if come indeed the shock, Decide—hurry up—and throttle every doubt. To North or to South, let the victory cleave, Vaunt it he may on his dung-hill the cock, Of all these thrills thrilled at keelson, and throes, But Uncle Sam’s eagle never crow will, believe.” Little felt the shoddyites a-toasting o’ their toes ; In mart and bazar Lucre chuckled the huzza, Sentiment : ay, while suspended hung all, Coining the dollars in the bloody mint of war. Ere the guns against Sumter opened there the ball, 5

34 John Marr and Other Sailors. Bridegroom Dick. 35

But in men, gray knights o’ the Order o’ Scars, ’T was Hal. And Will, from the naked heart- And brave boys bound by vows unto Mars, o’-oak, Nature grappled honor, intertwisting in the Will, the old messmate, minus trumpet, spoke, strife :— Informally intrepid—“Sink her, and be damned !”* But some cut the knot with a thoroughgoing Enough. Gathering way, the ironclad rammed. knife. The frigate, heeling over, on the wave threw a For how when the drums beat ? How in the fray dusk. In Hampton Roads on the fine balmy day ? Not sharing in the slant, the clapper of her bell The fixed metal struck—uninvoked struck the There a lull, wife, befell—drop o’ silence in the knell din. Of the Cumberland stillettoed by the Merrimac’s Let us enter that silence ere the belchings re- tusk ; begin.— While, broken in the wound underneath the gun- Through a ragged rift aslant in the cannonade’s deck, smoke Like a sword-fish’s blade in leviathan waylaid, An iron-clad reveals her repellent broadside The tusk was left infixed in the fast-foundering Bodily intact. But a frigate, all oak, wreck. Shows honeycombed by shot, and her deck There, dungeoned in the cockpit, the wounded go crimson-dyed. down, And a trumpet from port of the ironclad hails, And the chaplain with them. But the surges Summoning the other, whose flag never trails : uplift “Surrender that frigate, Will ! Surrender, The prone dead from deck, and for moment they Or I will sink her—ram, and end her !” drift * Historic.

36 John Marr and Other Sailors. Bridegroom Dick. 37

Washed with the swimmers, and the spent swim- Now, now, sweetheart, you sidle away, mers drown. No, never you like that kind o’ gay ; Nine fathom did she sink,—erect, though hid But sour if I get, giving truth her due, from light Honey-sweet forever, wife, will Dick be to you ! Save her colours unsurrendered and spars that kept the height. But avast with the War ! Why recall racking days Since set up anew are the slip’s started stays ? Nay, pardon, old aunty !— Wife, never let it fall, Nor less, though the gale we have left behind, That big started tear that hovers on the brim; Well may the heave o’ the sea remind. I forgot about your nephew and the Merrimac’s It irks me now, as it troubled me then, ball ; To think o’ the fate in the madness o’ men. No more then of her, since it summons up him. If Dick was with Farragut on the night-river, When the boom-chain we burst in the fire-raft’s But talk o’ fellows’ hearts in the wine’s genial glare, cup :— That blood-dyed the visage as red as the liver ; Trap them in the fate, jamb them in the strait, In the Battle for the Bay too if Dick had a share, Guns speak their hearts then, and speak right up. And saw one aloft a-piloting the war— Trumpet in the whirlwind, a Providence in place— The troublous colic o’ intestine war Our Admiral old whom the captains huzza, It sets the bowels o’ affection ajar. Dick joys in the man nor brags about the race. But, lord, old dame, so spins the whizzing world, A humming-top, ay, for the little boy-gods But better, wife, I like to booze on the days Flogging it well with their smart little rods, Ere the Old Order foundered in these very frays, Tittering at time and the coil uncurled. And tradition was lost and we learned strange ways.

38 John Marr and Other Sailors. Bridegroom Dick. 39

Often I think on the brave cruises then ; Tom was lieutenant in the brig-o’-war famed Resailing them in memory, I hail the press o’ men When an officer was hung for an arch-mutineer, On the gunned promenade where rolling they go, But a mystery cleaved, and the captain was Ere the dog-watch expire and break up the show. blamed, The Laced Caps I see between forward guns ; And a rumpus too raised, though his honor it Away from the powder-room they puff the cigar ; was clear. “Three days more, hey, the donnas and the And Tom he would say, when the mousers dons !” would try him, “Your Xeres widow, will you hunt her up, Starr ?” And with cup after cup o’ Burgundy ply him : The Laced Caps laugh, and the bright waves too ; “Gentlemen, in vain with your wassail you beset, Very jolly, very wicked, both sea and crew, For the more I tipple, the tighter do I get.” Nor heaven looks sour on either, I guess, No blabber, no, not even with the can— Nor Pecksniff he bosses the gods’ high mess. True to himself and loyal to his clan.

Wistful ye peer, wife, concerned for my head, Tom blessed us starboard and d—–—d us larboard, And how best to get me betimes to my bed. Right down from rail to the streak o’ the garboard. Nor less, wife, we liked him.—Tom was a man But king o’ the club, the gayest golden spark, In contrast queer with Chaplain Le Fan, Sailor o’ sailors, what sailor do I mark ? Who blessed us at morn, and at night yet again, Tom Tight, Tom Tight, no fine fellow finer, D—–—ning us only in decorous strain ; A cutwater-nose, ay, a spirited soul ; Preaching ’tween the guns—each cutlass in its But, boozing away at the well-brewed bowl, place— He never bowled back from that voyage to China. From text that averred old Adam a hard case.

40 John Marr and Other Sailors. Bridegroom Dick. 41

I see him—Tom—on horse-block standing, No whit the less though judicious was enough Trumpet at mouth, thrown up all amain, In dealing with the Finn who made the great An elephant’s bugle, vociferous demanding huff ; Of topmen aloft in the hurricane of rain, Our three-decker’s giant, a grand boatswain’s “Letting that sail there your faces flog ? mate, Manhandle it, men, and you ’ll get the good grog !” Manliest of men in his own natural senses ; O Tom, but he knew a blue-jacket’s ways, But driven stark mad by the devil’s drugged stuff, And how a lieutenant may genially haze ; Storming all aboard from his run-ashore late, Only a sailor sailors heartily praise. Challenging to battle, vouchsafing no pretenses, A reeling King Ogg, delirious in power, The quarter-deck carronades he seemed to make Wife, where be all these chaps, I wonder ? cower. Trumpets in the tempest, terrors in the fray, “Put him in brig there !” said Lieutenant Marrot. Boomed their commands along the deck like “Put him in brig !” back he mocked like a parrot ; thunder ; “Try it, then !” swaying a fist like Thor’s sledge, But silent is the sod, and thunder dies away. And making the pigmy constables hedge—

Ship’s-corporals and the master-at-arms. But Captain Turret, “Old Hemlock” tall, “In brig there, I say !”—They dally no more ; (A leaning tower when his tank brimmed all,) Like hounds let slip on a desperate boar, Manœuvre out alive from the war did he ? Together they pounce on the formidable Finn, Or, too old for that, drift under the lee ? Pinion and cripple and hustle him in, Kentuckian colossal, who, touching at Madeira, Anon, under sentry, between twin guns, The huge puncheon shipped o’ prime Santa-Clara ; He slides off in drowse, and the long night Then rocked along the deck so solemnly ! runs.

42 John Marr and Other Sailors. Bridegroom Dick. 43

Morning brings a summons. Whistling it calls, Never venturing a caveat whatever may betide, Shrilled through the pipes of the boatswain’s Though functionally here on humanity’s side, four aids ; The grave Surgeon shows, like the formal Thrilled down the hatchways along the dusk halls : physician Muster to the Scourge !—Dawn of doom and its Attending the rack o’ the Spanish Inquisition. blast ! As from cemeteries raised, sailors swarm before The angel o’ the “brig” brings his prisoner up ; the mast, Then, steadied by his old Santa-Clara, a sup, Tumbling up the ladders from the ship’s nether Heading all erect, the ranged assizes there, shades. Lo, Captain Turret, and under starred bunting (A florid full face and fine silvered hair,) Keeping in the background and taking small part, Gigantic the yet greater giant confronting. Lounging at their ease, indifferent in face, Behold the trim marines uncompromised in heart ; Now the culprit he liked, as a tall captain can Their Major, buttoned up, near the staff finds A Titan subordinate and true sailor-man ; room— And frequent he ’d shown it—no worded advance, The staff o’ lieutenants standing grouped in their But flattering the Finn with a well-timed glance. place. But what of that now ? In the martinet-mien All the Laced Caps o’ the ward-room come, Read the Articles of War, heed the naval routine ; The Chaplain among them, disciplined and dumb. While, cut to the heart a dishonor there to win, The blue-nosed boatswain, complexioned like slag, Restored to his senses, stood the Anak Finn ; Like a blue Monday shows—his implements in bag. In racked self-control the squeezed tears peeping, Executioners, his aids, a couple by him stand, Scalding the eye with repressed inkeeping. At a nod there the thongs to receive from his hand. Discipline must be ; the scourge is deemed due.

44 John Marr and Other Sailors. Bridegroom Dick. 45

But ah, for the sickening and strange heart- Old Captain Turret, who the brave wine could benumbing, stow. Compassionate abasement in shipmates that view ; Magnanimous, you think ?—But what does Dick Such a grand champion shamed there succumbing ! see ? Apron to your eye ! Why, never fell a blow ; Cheer up, old wifie, ’t was a long time ago. “Brown, tie him up.”—The cord he brooked :

How else ? — his arms spread apart — never But where ’s that sore one, crabbed and severe, threaping ; Lieutenant Don Lumbago, an arch scrutineer ? No, never he flinched, never sideways he looked, Call the roll to-day, would he answer—Here ! Peeled to the waistband, the marble flesh creeping, When the Blixum’s fellows to quarters mustered Lashed by the sleet the officious winds urge. How he ’d lurch along the lane of gun-crews In function his fellows their fellowship merge— clustered, The twain standing nigh—the two boatswain’s Testy as touchwood, to pry and to peer. mates, Jerking his sword underneath larboard arm, Sailors of his grade, ay, and brothers of his mess. He ground his worn grinders to keep himself calm. With sharp thongs adroop the junior one awaits Composed in his nerves, from the fidgets set free, The word to uplift. Tell, Sweet Wrinkles, alive now is he,

In Paradise a parlor where the even tempers be ? “Untie him—so ! Submission is enough.—Man, you may go.” Where ’s Commander All-a-Tanto ? Then, promenading aft, brushing fat Purser Smart, Where ’s Orlop Bob singing up from below ? “Flog ? Never meant it—had n’t any heart. Where ’s Rhyming Ned ? has he spun his last canto ? Degrade that tall fellow ?”—Such, wife, was he, Where ’s Jewsharp Jim ? Where ’s Ringadoon Joe ?

46 John Marr and Other Sailors. Bridegroom Dick. 47

Ah, for the music over and done, Lo, Genteel Jack in hurricane weather, The band all dismissed save the droned trom- Shagged like a bear, like a red lion roaring ; bone ! But O, so fine in his chapeau and feather, Where ’s Glen o’ the gun-room, who loved Hot- In port to the ladies never once jawing ; Scotch— All bland politesse, how urbane was he— Glen, prompt and cool in a perilous watch ? “Oui, mademoiselle”—“Ma chère amie !”

Where ’s flaxen-haired Phil ? a gray lieutenant ? ’T was Jack got up the ball at Naples, Or rubicund, flying a dignified pennant ? Gay in the old Ohio glorious ; But where sleeps his brother ?—the cruise it was His hair was curled by the berth-deck barber, o’er, Never you ’d deemed him a cub of rude Boreas ; But ah, for death’s grip that welcomed him In tight little pumps, with the grand dames in ashore ! rout, Where ’s Sid, the cadet, so frank in his brag, A-flinging his shapely foot all about ; Whose toast was audacious—“Here ’s Sid, and His watch-chain with love’s jeweled tokens Sid’s flag !” abounding, Like holiday-craft that have sunk unknown, Curls ambrosial shaking out odors, May a lark of a lad go lonely down ? Waltzing along the batteries, astounding Who takes the census under the sea ? The gunner glum and the grim-visaged loaders Can others like old ensigns be, Bunting I hoisted to flutter at the gaff— Wife, where be all these blades, I wonder, Rags in end that once were flags Pennoned fine fellows, so strong, so gay ? Gallant streaming from the staff ? Never their colors with a dip dived under ; Such scurvy doom could the chances deal Have they hauled them down in a lack-lustre day, To Top-Gallant Harry and Jack Genteel ? Or beached their boats in the Far, Far Away ?

48 John Marr and Other Sailors. Bridegroom Dick. 49

Hither and thither, blown wide asunder, The Monitor was ugly, but she served us right Where ’s this fleet, I wonder and wonder. well, Slipt their cables, rattled their adieu, Better than the Cumberland, a beauty and the (Whereaway pointing ? to what rendezvous ?) belle.” Out of sight, out of mind, like the crack Constitution, Better than the Cumberland !—Heart alive in me ! And many a keel time never shall renew— That battlemented hull, Tantallon o’ the sea, Bon Homme Dick o’ the buff Revolution, Kicked in, as at Boston the taxed chests o’ tea ! The Black Cockade and the staunch True-Blue. Ay, spurned by the ram, once a tall, shapely

craft, Doff hats to Decatur ! But where is his blazon ? But lopped by the Rebs to an iron-beaked raft— Must merited fame endure time’s wrong— A blacksmith’s unicorn armed cap-a-pie. Glory’s ripe grape wizen up to a raisin ?

Yes ! for Nature teems, and the years are strong, Under the water-line a ram’s blow is dealt : And who can keep the tally o’ the names that fleet And foul fall the knuckles that strike below the along ! belt.

Nor brave the inventions that serve to replace But his frigate, wife, his bride ? Would black- The openness of valor while dismantling the smiths brown grace. Into smithereens smite the solid old renown ?

Rivetting the bolts in the iron-clad’s shell, Aloof from all this and the never-ending game, Hark to the hammers with a rat-tat-tat ; Tantamount to teetering, plot and counterplot ; “Handier a derby than a laced cocked hat ! Impenetrable armor—all-perforating shot ;

50 John Marr and Other Sailors.

Aloof, bless God, ride the war-ships of old, A grand fleet moored in the roadstead of fame ; Not submarine sneaks with them are enrolled ; Their long shadows dwarf us, their flags are as flame.

Don’t fidget so, wife ; an old man’s passion Amounts to no more than this smoke that I puff ; There, there, now, buss me in good old fashion ; A died-down candle will flicker in the snuff. TOM DEADLIGHT.

But one last thing let your old babbler say, What Decatur’s coxswain said who was long ago hearsed, “Take in your flying-kites, for there comes a lubber’s day When gallant things will go, and the three- deckers first.”

My pipe is smoked out, and the grog runs slack ; But booze away, wife, at your blessed Bohea ; This empty can here must needs solace me— Nay, sweetheart, nay ; I take that back ; Dick drinks from your eyes and he finds no lack !

TOM DEADLIGHT.

(1810.)

URING a tempest encountered homeward- D bound from the Mediterranean, a grizzled petty-officer, one of the two captains of the fore- castle, dying at night in his hammock, swung in the sick-bay under the tiered gun-decks of the British Dreadnaught, 98, wandering in his mind, though with glimpses of sanity, and starting up at whiles, sings by snatches his good-bye and last injunctions to two messmates, his watchers, one of whom fans the fevered tar with the flap of his old sou’-wester. Some names and phrases, with here and there a line, or part of one ; these, in his aberration, wrested into incoherency from their original connection and import, he involuntarily derives, as he does the measure, from a famous old sea-ditty, whose cadences, long rife, and now humming in the collapsing brain, attune the last flutterings of distempered thought.

54 John Marr and Other Sailors. Tom Deadlight. 55

Farewell and adieu to you noble hearties,— But what ’s this I feel that is fanning my cheek, Farewell and adieu to you ladies of Spain, Matt ? For I ’ve received orders for to sail for the The white goney’s wing ?—how she rolls !— Deadman, ’t is the Cape !— But hope with the grand fleet to see you again. Give my kit to the mess, Jock, for kin none is mine, none ; And tell Holy Joe to avast with the crape. I have hove my ship to, with main-top-sail aback,

boys ; Dead reckoning, says Joe, it won’t do to go by ; I have hove my ship to, for the strike sound- But they doused all the glims, Matt, in sky ings clear— t’ other night. The black scud a’ flying ; but, by God’s blessing, Dead reckoning is good for to sail for the Dead- dam’ me, man ; Right up the Channel for the Deadman I’ll steer. And Tom Deadlight he thinks it may reckon

near right. I have worried through the waters that are callèd the Doldrums, The signal !—it streams for the grand fleet to And growled at Sargasso that clogs while ye anchor. grope— The captains—the trumpets—the hullabaloo ! Blast my eyes ; but the lightship is hid by the Stand by for blue-blazes, and mind your shank- mist, lads :— painters, Flying Dutchman—odds bobbs—off the Cape For the Lord High Admiral, he ’s squinting of Good Hope ! at you !

56 John Marr and Other Sailors.

But give me my tot, Matt, before I roll over ; Jock, let ’s have your flipper, it ’s good for to feel ; And don’t sew me up without baccy in mouth, boys, And don’t blubber like lubbers when I turn up my keel.

JACK ROY.

EPT up by relays of generations young K Never dies at halyards the blithe chorus sung ; While in sands, sounds, and seas where the storm-petrels cry, Dropped mute around the globe, these halyard singers lie. Short-lived the clippers for racing-cups that run, And speeds in life’s career many a lavish mother’s- son.

But thou, manly king o’ the old Splendid’s crew, The ribbons o’ thy hat still a-fluttering, should fly— A challenge, and forever, nor the bravery should rue. Only in a tussle for the starry flag high, When ’t is piety to do, and privilege to die, 59

60 John Marr and Other Sailors. Jack Roy. 61

Then, only then, would heaven think to lop Ashore on liberty he flashed in escapade, Such a cedar as the captain o’ the Splendid’s Vaulting over life in its levelness of grade, main-top : Like the dolphin off Africa in rainbow a-sweep- A belted sea-gentleman ; a gallant, off-hand ing— Mercutio indifferent in life’s gay command. Arch iridescent shot from seas languid sleeping. Magnanimous in humor ; when the splintering shot fell, Larking with thy life, if a joy but a toy, “Tooth-picks a-plenty, lads ; thank ‘em with a Heroic in thy levity wert thou, Jack Roy. shell !”

Sang Larry o’ the Cannakin, smuggler o’ the wine, At mess between guns, lad in jovial recline : “In Limbo our Jack he would chirrup up a cheer, The martinet there find a chaffing mutineer ; From a thousand fathoms down under hatches o’ your Hades, He ’d ascend in love-ditty, kissing fingers to your ladies !”

Never relishing the knave, though allowing for the menial, Nor overmuch the king, Jack, nor prodigally genial.

SEA-PIECES.

THE HAGLETS.

Y chapel bare, with walls sea-beat, B The lichened urns in wilds are lost About a carved memorial stone That shows, decayed and coral-mossed, A form recumbent, swords at feet, Trophies at head, and kelp for a winding-sheet.

I invoke thy ghost, neglected fane, Washed by the waters’ long lament ; I adjure the recumbent effigy To tell the cenotaph’s intent— Reveal why fagotted swords are at feet, Why trophies appear and weeds are the winding-sheet. 65

66 Sea-Pieces. The Haglets. 67

By open ports the Admiral sits, But crippled part in splintering fight, And shares repose with guns that tell The vanquished flying the victor’s flags, Of power that smote the arm’d Plate Fleet With prize-crews, under convoy-guns, Whose sinking flag-ship’s colors fell ; Heavy the fleet from Opher drags— But over the Admiral floats in light The Admiral crowding sail ahead, His squadron’s flag, the red-cross Flag of the White. Foremost with news who foremost in conflict sped. The eddying waters whirl astern, But out from cloistral gallery dim, The prow, a seedsman, sows the spray ; In early night his glance is thrown ; With bellying sails and buckling spars He marks the vague reserve of heaven, The black hull leaves a Milky Way ; He feels the touch of ocean lone ; Her timbers thrill, her batteries roll, Then turns, in frame part undermined, She revelling speeds exulting with pennon at pole. Nor notes the shadowing wings that fan behind. But ah, for standards captive trailed For all their scutcheoned castles’ pride— There, peaked and gray, three haglets fly, Castilian towers that dominate Spain, And follow, follow fast in wake Naples, and either Ind beside ; Where slides the cabin-lustre shy, Those haughty towers, armorial ones, And sharks from man a glamour take, Rue the salute from the Admiral’s dens of guns. Seething along the line of light In lane that endless rules the warship’s flight. Ensigns and arms in trophy brave, The sea-fowl here, whose hearts none know, Braver for many a rent and scar, They followed late the flagship quelled, The captor’s naval hall bedeck, (As now the victor one) and long Spoil that insures an earldom’s star— Above her gurgling grave, shrill held Toledoes great, grand draperies too, With screams their wheeling rites—then sped Spain’s steel and silk, and splendors from Peru. Direct in silence where the victor led.

68 Sea-Pieces. The Haglets. 69

Now winds less fleet, but fairer, blow, A lull ! and tongues of languid flame A ripple laps the coppered side, Lick every boom, and lambent show While phosphor sparks make ocean gleam, Electric ’gainst each face aloft ; Like camps lit up in triumph wide ; The herds of clouds with bellowings go : With lights and tinkling cymbals meet The black ship rears—beset—harassed, Acclaiming seas the advancing conqueror greet. Then plunges far with luminous antlers vast. In trim betimes they turn from land, But who a flattering tide may trust, Some shivered sails and spars they stow ; Or favoring breeze, or aught in end ?— One watch, dismissed, they troll the can, Careening under startling blasts While loud the billow thumps the bow— The sheeted towers of sails impend ; Vies with the fist that smites the board, While, gathering bale, behind is bred Obstreperous at each reveller’s jovial word. A livid storm-bow, like a rainbow dead. Of royal oak by storms confirmed, At trumpet-call the topmen spring ; The tested hull her lineage shows : And, urged by after-call in stress, Vainly the plungings whelm her prow— Yet other tribes of tars ascend She rallies, rears, she sturdier grows ; The rigging’s howling wilderness ; Each shot-hole plugged, each storm-sail home, But ere yard-ends alert they win, With batteries housed she rams the watery dome. Hell rules in heaven with hurricane-fire and din. The spars, athwart at spiry height, Dim seen adrift through driving scud, Like quaking Lima’s crosses rock ; The wan moon shows in plight forlorn ; Like bees the clustering sailors cling Then, pinched in visage, fades and fades Against the shrouds, or take the shock Like to the faces drowned at morn, Flat on the swept yard-arms aslant, When deeps engulfed the flag-ship’s crew, Dipped like the wheeling condor’s pinions gaunt. And, shrilling round, the inscrutable haglets flew.

70 Sea-Pieces. The Haglets. 71

And still they fly, nor now they cry, To-night ’s the night that ends the week— But constant fan a second wake, Ends day and week and month and year : Unflagging pinions ply and ply, A fourfold imminent flickering time, Abreast their course intent they take ; For now the midnight draws anear : Their silence marks a stable mood, Eight bells ! and passing-bells they be— They patient keep their eager neighborhood. The Old year fades, the Old Year dies at sea. Plumed with a smoke, a confluent sea, Heaved in a combing pyramid full, He launched them well. But shall the New Spent at its climax, in collapse Redeem the pledge the Old Year made, Down headlong thundering stuns the hull : Or prove a self-asserting heir ? The trophy drops ; but, reared again, But healthy hearts few qualms invade : Shows Mars’ high-altar and contemns the main. By shot-chests grouped in bays ’tween guns The gossips chat, the grizzled, sea-beat ones. Rebuilt it stands, the brag of arms, And boyish dreams some graybeards blab : Transferred in site—no thought of where “To sea, my lads, we go no more The sensitive needle keeps its place, Who share the Acapulco prize ; And starts, disturbed, a quiverer there ; We ’ll all night in, and bang the door ; The helmsman rubs the clouded glass— Our ingots red shall yield us bliss : Peers in, but lets the trembling portent pass. Lads, golden years begin to-night with this !” Let pass as well his shipmates do Released from deck, yet waiting call, (Whose dream of power no tremors jar) Glazed caps and coats baptized in storm, Fears for the fleet convoyed astern : A watch of Laced Sleeves round the board “Our flag they fly, they share our star ; Draw near in heart to keep them warm : Spain’s galleons great in hull are stout : “Sweethearts and wives !” clink, clink, they meet, Manned by our men—like us they ’ll ride it out.” And, quaffing, dip in wine their beards of sleet.

72 Sea-Pieces. The Haglets. 73

“Ay, let the star-light stay withdrawn, In dream at last his dozings merge, So here her hearth-light memory fling, In dream he reaps his victory’s fruit : So in this wine-light cheer be born, The Flags-o’-the-Blue, the Flags-o’-the-Red, And honor’s fellowship weld our ring— Dipped flags of his country’s fleets salute Honor ! our Admiral’s aim foretold : His Flag-o’-the-White in harbor proud— A tomb or a trophy, and lo, ’t is a trophy and gold !” But why should it blench ? Why turn to a painted But he, a unit, sole in rank, shroud ? Apart needs keep his lonely state, The hungry seas they hound the hull, The sentry at his guarded door The sharks they dog the haglets’ flight ; Mute as by vault the sculptured Fate ; With one consent the winds, the waves Belted he sits in drowsy light, In hunt with fins and wings unite, And, hatted, nods—the Admiral of the White. While drear the harps in cordage sound He dozes, aged with watches passed— Remindful wails for old Armadas drowned. Years, years of pacing to and fro ; He dozes, nor attends the stir Ha—yonder ! are they Northern Lights ? In bullioned standards rustling low, Or signals flashed to warn or ward ? Nor minds the blades whose secret thrill Yea, signals lanced in breakers high ; Perverts overhead the magnet’s Polar will ;— But doom on warning follows hard : While yet they veer in hope to shun, Less heeds the shadowing three that ply They strike ! and thumps of hull and heart are And follow, follow fast in wake, one. Untiring wing and lidless eye— But beating hearts a drum-beat calls Abreast their course intent they take ; And prompt the men to quarters go ; Or sigh or sing, they hold for good Discipline, curbing nature, rules— The unvarying flight and fixed inveterate mood. Heroic makes who duty know :

74 Sea-Pieces. The Haglets. 75

They execute the trump’s command, Like shuttles hurrying in the looms Or in peremptory places wait and stand. Aloft through rigging frayed they ply— Yet cast about in blind amaze— Cross and recross—weave and inweave, As through their watery shroud they peer : Then lock the web with clinching cry “We tacked from land : then how betrayed ? Over the seas on seas that clasp Have currents swerved us—snared us here ?” The weltering wreck where gurgling ends the None heed the blades that clash in place gasp. Under lamps dashed down that lit the magnet’s case. Ah, for the Plate-Fleet trophy now,

The victor’s voucher, flags and arms ; Never they ’ll hang in Abbey old Ah, what may live, who mighty swim, And take Time’s dust with holier palms ; Or boat-crew reach that shore forbid, Nor less content, in liquid night, Or cable span ? Must victors drown— Their captor sleeps—the Admiral of the White. Perish, even as the vanquished did ?

Man keeps from man the stifled moan ; They shouldering stand, yet each in heart how Imbedded deep with shells lone. And drifted treasure deep, Some heaven invoke ; but rings of reefs Forever he sinks deeper in Prayer and despair alike deride Unfathomable sleep— In dance of breakers forked or peaked, His cannon round him thrown, Pale maniacs of the maddened tide ; His sailors at his feet, While, strenuous yet some end to earn, The wizard sea enchanting them The haglets spin, though now no more astern. Where never haglets beat.

76 Sea-Pieces.

On nights when meteors play And light the breakers’ dance, The Oreads from the caves With silvery elves advance ; And up from ocean stream, And down from heaven far, The rays that blend in dream The abysm and the star.

THE ÆOLIAN HARP

AT THE SURF INN.

THE ÆOLIAN HARP

AT THE SURF INN.

IST the harp in window wailing L Stirred by fitful gales from sea : Shrieking up in mad crescendo— Dying down in plaintive key !

Listen : less a strain ideal Than Ariel’s rendering of the Real. What that Real is, let hint A picture stamped in memory’s mint.

Braced well up, with beams aslant, Betwixt the continents sails the Phocion, To Baltimore bound from Alicant. Blue breezy skies white fleeces fleck Over the chill blue white-capped ocean : From yard-arm comes—“Wreck ho, a wreck !” 79

80 Sea-Pieces. The Æolian Harp. 81

Dismasted and adrift, From collision never shrinking, Longtime a thing forsaken ; Drive what may through darksome smother ; Overwashed by every wave Saturate, but never sinking, Like the slumbering kraken ; Fatal only to the other ! Heedless if the billow roar, Deadlier than the sunken reef Oblivious of the lull, Since still the snare it shifteth, Leagues and leagues from shoal or shore, Torpid in dumb ambuscade It swims—a levelled hull : Waylayingly it drifteth. Bulwarks gone—a shaven wreck, Nameless, and a grass-green deck. O, the sailors—O, the sails ! A lumberman : perchance, in hold O, the lost crews never heard of ! Prostrate pines with hemlocks rolled. Well the harp of Ariel wails Thoughts that tongue can tell no word It has drifted, waterlogged, of ! Till by trailing weeds beclogged : Drifted, drifted, day by day, Pilotless on pathless way. It has drifted till each plank Is oozy as the oyster-bank : Drifted, drifted, night by night, Craft that never shows a light ; Nor ever, to prevent worse knell, Tolls in fog the warning bell.

MINOR SEA-PIECES.

TO THE MASTER OF THE “METEOR.”

ONESOME on earth’s loneliest deep, L Sailor ! who dost thy vigil keep— Off the Cape of Storms dost musing sweep Over monstrous waves that curl and comb ; Of thee we think when here from brink We blow the mead in bubbling foam.

Of thee we think, in a ring we link ; To the shearer of ocean’s fleece we drink, And the Meteor rolling home.

86 Sea-Pieces. The Figure-Head. 87

FAR OFF-SHORE. THE FIGURE-HEAD.

OOK, the raft, a signal flying, The Charles-and-Emma seaward sped, L Thin—a shred ; (Named from the carven pair at prow,) None upon the lashed spars lying, He so smart, and a curly head, Quick or dead. She tricked forth as a bride knows how : Pretty stem for the port, I trow ! Cries the sea-fowl, hovering over, “Crew, the crew ?” But iron-rust and alum-spray And the billow, reckless rover, And chafing gear, and sun and dew Sweeps anew ! Vexed this lad and lassie gay,

Tears in their eyes, salt tears nor few ;

And the hug relaxed with the failing glue. THE MAN-OF-WAR HAWK.

ON black man-of-war-hawk that wheels in But came in end a dismal night, Y the light With creaking beams and ribs that groan, O’er the black ship’s white sky-s’l, sunned cloud A black lee-shore and waters white : to the sight, Wrecked on the reef, the pair lie prone : Have we low-flyers wings to ascend to his height ? O, the breakers dance, but the winds they moan !

No arrow can reach him ; nor thought can attain To the placid supreme in the sweep of his reign.

88 Sea-Pieces. Old Counsel. 89

And, look, the underwriters’ man, THE GOOD CRAFT “SNOW-BIRD.” Timely, when the stevedore ’s done, Puts on his specs to pry and scan, TRENUOUS need that head-wind be And sets her down—A, No. 1. S From purposed voyage that drives at last The ship, sharp-braced and dogged still, Bravo, master ! Brava, brig ! Beating up against the blast. For slanting snows out of the West Never the Snow-Bird cares one fig ; Brigs that figs for market gather, And foul winds steady her, though a pest. Homeward-bound upon the stretch, Encounter oft this uglier weather Yet in end their port they fetch.

Mark yon craft from sunny Smyrna OLD COUNSEL Glazed with ice in Boston Bay ; Out they toss the fig-drums cheerly, OF THE YOUNG MASTER OF A WRECKED Livelier for the frosty ray. CALIFORNIA CLIPPER.

What if sleet off-shore assailed her, OME out of the Golden Gate, What though ice yet plate her yards ; C Go round the Horn with streamers, In wintry port not less she renders Carry royals early and late ; Summer’s gift with warm regards ! But, brother, be not over-elate— All hands save ship ! has startled dreamers.

90 Sea-Pieces. To Ned. 91

They are friends ; and friendly they guide him THE TUFT OF KELP. to prey, Yet never partake of the treat— LL dripping in tangles green, Eyes and brains to the dotard lethargic and dull, A Cast up by a lonely sea, Pale ravener of horrible meat. If purer for that, O Weed, Bitterer, too, are ye ?

TO NED. THE MALDIVE SHARK. HERE is the world we roved, Ned Bunn ? BOUT the Shark, phlegmatical one, W Hollows thereof lay rich in shade A Pale sot of the Maldive sea, By voyagers old inviolate thrown The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim, Ere Paul Pry cruised with Pelf and Trade. How alert in attendance be. To us old lads some thoughts come home From his saw-pit of mouth, from his charnel of Who roamed a world young lads no more shall maw, roam. They have nothing of harm to dread, But liquidly glide on his ghastly flank Nor less the satiate year impends Or before his Gorgonian head ; When, wearying of routine-resorts, Or lurk in the port of serrated teeth The pleasure-hunter shall break loose, In white triple tiers of glittering gates, Ned, for our Pantheistic ports :— And there find a haven when peril ’s abroad, Marquesas and glenned isles that be An asylum in jaws of the Fates ! Authentic Edens in a Pagan sea.

92 Sea-Pieces. Crossing the Tropics. 93

The charm of scenes untried shall lure, And, Ned, a legend urge the flight— CROSSING THE TROPICS. The Typee-truants under stars Unknown to Shakespere’s Midsummer-Night ; (From “The Saya-y-Manto.”) And man, if lost to Saturn’s Age, HILE now the Pole Star sinks from sight Yet feeling life no Syrian pilgrimage. The Southern Cross it climbs the sky ; W But losing thee, my love, my light, But, tell, shall he, the tourist, find O bride but for one bridal night, Our isles the same in violet-glow The loss no rising joys supply. Enamoring us what years and years—

Ah, Ned, what years and years ago ! Well, Adam advances, smart in pace, Love, love, the Trade Winds urge abaft, But scarce by violets that advance you trace. And thee, from thee, they steadfast waft.

But we, in anchor-watches calm, By day the blue and silver sea The Indian Psyche’s languor won, And chime of waters blandly fanned— And, musing, breathed primeval balm Nor these, nor Gama’s stars to me From Edens ere yet overrun ; May yield delight, since still for thee Marvelling mild if mortal twice, I long as Gama longed for land. Here and hereafter, touch a Paradise.

I yearn, I yearn, reverting turn, My heart it streams in wake astern.

94 Sea-Pieces. The Berg. 95

When, cut by slanting sleet, we swoop Where raves the world’s inverted year, THE BERG If roses all your porch shall loop, Not less your heart for me will droop ( A DREAM.) Doubling the world’s last outpost drear. SAW a ship of martial build O love, O love, these oceans vast : I (Her standards set, her brave apparel on) Love, love, it is as death were past ! Directed as by madness mere Against a stolid iceberg steer, Nor budge it, though the infatuate 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 ; nor lace of traceries fine, Nor pendant drops in grot or mine Were jarred, when the stunned ship went down.

96 Sea-Pieces. The Enviable Isles. 97

Nor sole the gulls in cloud that wheeled Circling one snow-flanked peak afar, THE ENVIABLE ISLES. But nearer fowl the floes that skimmed And crystal beaches, felt no jar. (From “Rammon.”) No thrill transmitted stirred the lock HROUGH storms you reach them and from Of jack-straw needle-ice at base ; storms are free. Towers undermined by waves—the block T Afar descried, the foremost drear in hue, Atilt impending—kept their place. But, nearer, green ; and, on the marge, the sea Seals, dozing sleek on sliddery ledges Makes thunder low and mist of rainbowed dew. Slipt never, when by loftier edges

Through very inertia overthrown, But, inland, where the sleep that folds the hills The impetuous ship in bafflement went down A dreamier sleep, the trance of God, instills—

On uplands hazed, in wandering airs aswoon, Hard Berg (methought), so cold, so vast, Slow-swaying palms salute love’s cypress tree With mortal damps self-overcast ; Adown in vale where pebbly runlets croon Exhaling still thy dankish breath— A song to lull all sorrow and all glee. Adrift dissolving, bound for death ;

Though lumpish thou, a lumbering one— Sweet-fern and moss in many a glade are here, A lumbering lubbard loitering slow, Where, strown in flocks, what cheek-flushed Impingers rue thee and go down, myriads lie Sounding thy precipice below, Dimpling in dream—unconscious slumberers Nor stir the slimy slug that sprawls mere, Along thy dead indifference of walls. While billows endless round the beaches die.

PEBBLES.

HOUGH the Clerk of the Weather insist, T And lay down the weather-law, Pintado and gannet they wist That the winds blow whither they list In tempest or flaw.

II.

Old are the creeds, but stale the schools, Revamped as the mode may veer, But Orm from the schools to the beaches strays, And, finding a Conch hoar with time, he delays And reverent lifts it to ear. 101

102 Pebbles. Pebbles. 103

That Voice, pitched in far monotone, VI. Shall it swerve ? shall it deviate ever ? Curled in the comb of yon billow Andean, The Seas have inspired it, and Truth— Is it the Dragon’s heaven-challenging crest ? Truth, varying from sameness never. Elemental mad ramping of ravening waters—

Yet Christ on the Mount, and the dove in her

nest ! III.

In hollows of the liquid hills VII. Where the long Blue Ridges run, Healed of my hurt, I laud the inhuman Sea— The flattery of no echo thrills, Yea, bless the Angels Four that there convene ; For echo the seas have none ; For healed I am even by their pitiless breath Nor aught that gives man back man’s strain— Distilled in wholesome dew named rosmarine. The hope of his heart, the dream in his brain.

IV.

On ocean where the embattled fleets repair,

Man, suffering inflictor, sails on sufferance there. END.

Implacable I, the old Implacable Sea : Implacable most when most I smile serene— Pleased, not appeased, by myriad wrecks in me.

Editorial Notes 105 Editorial Notes Charles Haberstroh, in his facsimile edition of This edition reproduces the 1888 De Vinne John Marr and Other Sailors (Norwood Edi- Press first edition of John Marr and Other tions, 1977), provides a census of known copies Sailors. All line and page breaks from the of the first edition and reports the following original have been preserved, as have spelling, emendations made in Melville’s hand or in his punctuation, capitalization, drop capitals, page wife’s hand in presentation copies of the vol- numbers, and signature identification numbers. ume: Following the typesetting practice of that era, Page.line De Vinne 1888 MS emendation colons, semi-colons, question marks, and ex- 21.4 hold held clamation points are preceded by a word space. 33.12 one either The text typeface is Georgia; the display face on 36.9 jamb jam the title page is Perpetua Titling. 38.19 boozing bowsing Typographical errors have not been corrected. 38.20 that voyage that last voyage The only two found are noted here: missing 42.15 shows lours 49.8 armed in armor periods at line ends, after “loaders” at 47.18, 50.15 booze bowse and after “down” at 96.12. 79.11 To For Ultimately, the Northwestern-Newberry edition 87.14 Wrecked Dropped will establish and make available the most author- 96.22 dead indifference dense stolidity itative texts of the poems and prose pieces found in John Marr and Other Sailors. Until then, the Some of these alterations were incorporated texts presented here are offered for the conven- in the 1922 edition of John Marr and Other Po- ience and consideration of researchers, scholars, ems by Herman Melville, prepared by Henry and readers. Users are encouraged to download, Chapin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University save, print, copy from, and link to this file, but are Press, 1922). That volume omits the prose found asked not to publish or post the complete “work” in the first edition of John Marr and includes elsewhere without first obtaining permission. additional verse from Mardi, Timoleon, Battle- Pieces and Clarel. 104

106 Editorial Notes Editorial Notes 107

These changes were also incorporated in the “W. C. R.,” to whom the volume John Marr 1924 edition of John Marr in The Works of was dedicated, was William Clark Russell (1844– Herman Melville: Standard Edition, Volume 1911). His The Wreck of the “Grosvenor”: An XVI (London: Constable, 1924). That edition Account of the Mutiny of the Crew and the Loss also added the following “prefatory paragraph of the Ship When Trying to Make the Bermudas concerning sailors’ oaths . . . from a MS. note in was first published in 1875. Russell later edited Melville’s handwriting inserted in his copy of an edition of Typee, published by John Lane John Marr and marked as referring to that (London & New York, 1904). book”: Touching certain expletives in the verse, it should be borne in mind that with sailors Paul Royster their profane language is essentially with- University of Nebraska-Lincoln out profane purpose. Doubtless the origi- 12 December 2005 nator of an exclamative oath passionately intends for the moment whatever etymo- logical meaning it may have, but in generations of parroted repetition the ejacu- lation becomes a mechanical habit less of the utterer than of his organ of utterance; and, ethically viewed, is but a percussion of the air. Hence, however reprehensible with the polite a sailor’s habitual swearing may be, it is yet reverently to be presumed that the Recording Angel makes no note of it in that book wherein transgressions of the proprieties are never entered; the dis- criminating scribe setting down not the trespass of the tongue but the sins of the heart.