Man, inflictor and recipient of suffering, sails the old Implacable (impartial) Sea . Pebbles by Herman Melville

 Man, inflictor and recipient of suffering, sails the old Implacable (impartial) Sea 

Pebbles by Herman Melville

 

I

Though the Clerk of the Weather insist,

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.

That Voice, pitched in far monotone,

Shall it swerve? shall it deviate ever?

The Seas have inspired it, and Truth--

Truth, varying from sameness never.

 

III

In hollows of the liquid hills

Where the long Blue Ridges run,

The flattery of no echo thrills,

For echo the seas have none;

Nor aught that gives man back man's strain--

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.

 

V

Implacable I, the old Implacable Sea:

Implacable most when most I smile serene--

Pleased, not appeased, by myriad wrecks in

me.

 

VI

Curled in the comb of yon billow Andean,

Is it the Dragon's heaven-challenging crest?

Elemental mad ramping of ravening waters--

Yet Christ on the Mount, and the dove in

her nest!

 

VII

Healed of my hurt, I laud the inhuman Sea--

Yea, bless the Angels Four that there convene;

For healed I am ever by their pitiless breath

Distilled in wholesome dew named rosmarine.

 

 ***

‘Melville’s gaze is not upward, like Dickinson’s, nor directed in a democratic horizontal, like Whitman’s – it is pitched downward, to the drowned under the sea, or to the fiery hell at the core of the earth’ (Helen Vendler)