The Aeolian Harp

Herman Melville 1819 – 1891



_At The Surf Inn_

List the harp in window wailing
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,_
For 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!'

Dismasted and adrift,
Longtime a thing forsaken;
Overwashed by every wave
Like the slumbering kraken;
Heedless if the billow roar,
Oblivious of the lull,
Leagues and leagues from shoal or shore,
It swims--a levelled hull:
Bulwarks gone--a shaven wreck,
Nameless and a grass-green deck.
A lumberman: perchance, in hold
Prostrate pines with hemlocks rolled.

It has drifted, waterlogged,
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.

From collision never shrinking,
Drive what may through darksome smother;
Saturate, but never sinking,
Fatal only to the _other!_
Deadlier than the sunken reef
Since still the snare it shifteth,
Torpid in dumb ambuscade
Waylayingly it drifteth.

O, the sailors--O, the sails!
O, the lost crews never heard of!
Well the harp of Ariel wails
Thought that tongue can tell no word of!

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:18 min read
77

Quick analysis:

Scheme A BCDC EEFF DADGAXG XAXAHIHIGGJJ XDKKLLMMNN BXBHXODO PQPQ
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,508
Words 258
Stanzas 8
Stanza Lengths 1, 4, 4, 7, 12, 10, 8, 4

Herman Melville

Herman Melville was an American writer best known for the novel Moby-Dick. more…

All Herman Melville poems | Herman Melville Books

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