Poems by Herman Melville

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How often in the years that close,
For Soldiers lost in Ocean Transports
Plain be the phrase, yet apt the verse,
I
On one of the Battle-fields of the Wilderness
In placid hours well-pleased we dream
Commemorative of the Dissolution of armies at the Peace
A Reverie
Sunning ourselves in October on a day
November, 1863
Sailors there are of the gentlest breed,
From "The Saya-y-Manto."
Stay, Death, Not mine the Christus-wand
We drop our dead in the sea,
If Luther's day expand to Darwin's year,
Look, the raft, a signal flying,
An idealized Portrait, by E. Vedder, in the Spring Exhibition of the National Academy, 1865
The Ancient of Days forever is young,
We rovers bold,
I
Listless he eyes the palisades
For Graves at Pea Ridge, Arkansas
Ha, ha, gods and kings; fill high, one and all;
Kept up by relays of generations young
Since as in night's deck-watch ye show,
The Return of the Sire de Nesle.
Fear me, virgin whosoever
Though fast youth's glorious fable flies,
July, 1862
Far off in the sea is Marlena,
To have known him, to have loved him
Aloof they crown the foreland lone,
Of The Young Master of a Wrecked California Clipper
Beauty and youth, with manners sweet, and friends--
Ay, man is manly. Here you see
Happy are they and charmed in life
Youth is the time when hearts are large,
I
Care is all stuff:--
A plea against the vindictive cry raised by civilians shortly after the surrender at Appomattox
Wandering late by morning seas
October, 1864
Departed the pride, and the glory of Mardi:
Mortally wounded at Chancellorsville
At The Surf Inn
While faith forecasts millennial years
The Parthenon uplifted on its rock first challenging the view on the approach to Athens.
In bed I muse on Tenier's boors,
A Dream
He rides at their head;
"Though He slay me yet will I trust in Him."
From "Rammon."
The Charles-and-Emma seaward sped,
Under the Disaster of the Second Manassas
Strenuous need that head-wind be
By chapel bare, with walls sea-beat
July, 1863
Hail! voyagers, hail!
About the Shark, phlegmatical one,
Yon black man-of-war-hawk that wheels in the light
Ending in the First Manassas
He toned the sprightly beam of morning
Indicative of the passion of the people on the 15th of April, 1865
The grass shall never forget this grave.
Persian, you rise
With banners furled and clarions mute,
Hanging from the beam,
In shards the sylvan vases lie,
June, 1865
An Old Sailor's Lament
There is a coal-black Angel
Supposed to have been suggested to an Englishman of the old order by the fight of the Monitor and Merrimac
All dripping in tangles green,
Where is the world we roved, Ned Bunn?
Lonesome on earth's loneliest deep,
During a tempest encountered homeward-bound from the Mediterranean, a grizzled petty-officer, one of the two captains of the forecastle, dying at night in his hammock, swung in the sick-bay under the tiered gun-decks of the British Dreadnaught, 98, w
We fish, we fish, we merrily swim,