The lord is a man of war!
This poem from Battle-Pieces recounts the famous taking of New Orleans without firing a single shot by Union Admiral David Farragut and situates within the metaphor of Moses freeing Hebrew slaves without resorting to violence with this assertion. The context is that God was most certainly on the side of the Union in the Civil War and that this is not irreconcilable as God has the power to help men win wars—or at least battles—without bloodshed.
Give me the nerve
That never will swerve
Running out on life’s ledges of danger
This poem was never published during Melville’s lifetime and offers an extraordinary and rare glimpse into the poet writing in first person without benefit of hiding behind a person. One can never know for sure if this poem accurately reflects a man who seems to be making an appeal to God for courage and strength, but if so, it is a certainly a useful verse for the study of the man himself. Though it must certainly be admitted that Melville was never one to lack the nerve to tread along the ledges of literary life.
Stand where Posterity shall stand;
Stand where the Ancients stood before.
This poem is found in the collection Timoleon and offers instruction to beware the passing fancy of any contemporary age and instead look to guidance from the past. The moral is contained in this short poems closing lines suggesting that what was wise once is wise forever.
Though lumpish thou, a lumbering one —
A lumbering lubbard loitering slow,
Impingers rue thee and go down,
The use of alliteration in this poem from the collection John Marr and Other Sailors effectively communicates the idea of the title object as slow-witted and slow-moving before the quick reminder that though this may be so, the iceberg also remains undefeated against all opposition. The stolidity of nature is encapsulated by the iceberg’s immovable strength against all comers, especially men in their weak ships.
O the delight to believe in a wight
More than mortal, with something of man,
Whisking about, an invisible spright,a
The occasionally morose and usually serious nature of Melville is expressed through his poetry as well as prose, but very rarely in either does the reader encounter the kind of light-hearted, spirited man who also just another father in love with the infectious charm of his children as he is here. From the constitutionally lighter collection Weeds and Wildings, the subject of these lines is none other than Santa Claus as Melville reflects with only the slightest dash of his typical melancholy on his sincere desire that his children go on believing in the mythic deliver of presents for as long as possible.
Ring down! The curtain falls and ye
Will go your ways. Yet think of me.
And genie take what ’s genie given
And long be happy under heaven.
This is the poem “Adieu” in its entirety and it is one of the almost 50 works of verse which were never published while Melville was alive. The poem would be a more than fitting epitaph for the writer’s headstone as it very neatly sums up a life in its four lines. The curtain fell on Melville’s life after enjoying early success (what’s genie given) that ironically began to slip away (genie take) upon the publication of the one single work whose title character alone is enough to make everyone of think of him. The poem also speaks of happiness in an afterlife and if it were possible to raise that curtain of the afterlife and allow him to take one last bow, he would certainly be happy to know just how much he would be thought of long after he puts these words to paper.
