Clarel, Part 1, Canto 1

Clarel — Part 1, Canto 1: The Hostel
Herman Melville
Exported from Wikisource on 07/15/20
1. The Hostel
IN CHAMBER low and scored by time,
Masonry old, late washed with lime—
Much like a tomb new-cut in stone;
Elbow on knee, and brow sustained
All motionless on sidelong hand, ⁠5
A student sits, and broods alone.
The small deep casement sheds a ray
Which tells that in the Holy Town
It is the passing of the day—
The Vigil of Epiphany. ⁠10
Beside him in the narrow cell
His luggage lies unpacked; thereon
The dust lies, and on him as well—
The dust of travel. But anon
His face he lifts—in feature fine, ⁠15
Yet pale, and all but feminine
But for the eye and serious brow—
Then rises, paces to and fro,
And pauses, saying, "Other cheer
Than that anticipated here, ⁠20
By me the learner, now I find.
Theology, art thou so blind?
What means this naturalistic knell
In lieu of Siloh's oracle
Which here should murmur? Snatched from grace, ⁠25
And waylaid in the holy place!
Not thus it was but yesterday
Off Jaffa on the clear blue sea;
Nor thus, my heart, it was with thee
Landing amid the shouts and spray; ⁠30
Nor thus when mounted, full equipped,
Out through the vaulted gate we slipped
Beyond the walls where gardens bright
With bloom and blossom cheered the sight.
"The plain we crossed. In afternoon, ⁠35
How like our early autumn bland—
So softly tempered for a boon—
The breath of Sharon's prairie land!
And was it, yes, her titled Rose,
That scarlet poppy oft at hand? ⁠40
Then Ramleh gleamed, the sail white town
At even. There I watched day close
From the fair tower, the suburb one:
Seaward and dazing set the sun:
Inland I turned me toward the wall ⁠45
Of Ephraim, stretched in purple pall.
Romance of mountains! But in end
What change the near approach could lend.
"The start this morning—gun and lance
Against the quartermoon's low tide; ⁠50
The thieves' huts where we hushed the ride;
Chill daybreak in the lorn advance;
In stony strait the scorch of noon,
Thrown off-by crags, reminding one
Of those hot paynims whose fierce hands ⁠55
Flung showers of Afric's fiery sands
In face of that crusader king,
Louis, to wither so his wing;
And, at the last, aloft for goal,
Like the ice bastions round the Pole, ⁠60
Thy blank, blank towers, Jerusalem!"
Again he droops, with brow on hand.
But, starting up, "Why, well I knew
Salem to be no Samarcand;
'Twas scarce surprise; and yet first view ⁠65
Brings this eclipse. Needs be my soul,
Purged by the desert's subtle air
From bookish vapors, now is heir
To nature's influx of control;
Comes likewise now to consciousness ⁠70
Of the true import of that press
Of inklings which in travel late
Through Latin lands, did vex my state,
And somehow seemed clandestine. Ah!
These under formings in the mind, ⁠75
Banked corals which ascend from far,
But little heed men that they wind
Unseen, unheard—till lo, the reef—
The reef and breaker, wreck and grief.
But here unlearning, how to me ⁠80
Opes the expanse of time's vast sea!
Yes, I am young, but Asia old.
The books, the books not all have told.
"And, for the rest, the facile chat
Of overweenings—what was that ⁠85
The grave one said in Jaffa lane
Whom there I met, my countryman,
But new returned from travel here;
Some word of mine provoked the strain;
His meaning now begins to clear: ⁠90
Let me go over it again:—
"Our New World's worldly wit so shrewd
Lacks the Semitic reverent mood,
Unworldly—hardly may confer
Fitness for just interpreter ⁠95
Of Palestine. Forego the state
Of local minds inveterate,
Tied to one poor and casual form.
To avoid the deep saves not from storm.
"Those things he said, and added more; ⁠100
No clear authenticated lore
I deemed. But now, need now confess
My cultivated narrowness,
Though scarce indeed of sort he meant?
'Tis the uprooting of content!" ⁠105
So he, the student. 'Twas a mind,
Earnest by nature, long confined
Apart like Vesta in a grove
Collegiate, but let to rove
At last abroad among mankind, ⁠110
And here in end confronted so
By the true genius, friend or foe,
And actual visage of a place
Before but dreamed of in the glow
Of fancy's spiritual grace. ⁠115
Further his meditations aim,
Reverting to his different frame
Bygone. And then: "Can faith remove
Her light, because of late no plea
I've lifted to her source above?" ⁠120
Dropping thereat upon the knee,
His lips he parted; but the word
Against the utterance demurred
And failed him. With infirm intent
He sought the housetop. Set of sun: ⁠125
His feet upon the yet warm stone,
He, Clarel, by the coping leant,
In silent gaze. The mountain town,
A walled and battlemented one,
With houseless suburbs front and rear, ⁠130
And flanks built up from steeps severe,
Saddles and turrets the ascent—
Tower which rides the elephant.
Hence large the view. There where he stood,
Was Acra's upper neighborhood. ⁠135
The circling hills he saw, with one
Excelling, ample in its crown,
Making the uplifted city low
By contrast—Olivet. The flow
Of eventide was at full brim; ⁠140
Overlooked, the houses sloped from him—
Terraced or domed, unchimnied, gray,
All stone—a moor of roofs. No play
Of life; no smoke went up, no sound
Except low hum, and that half drowned. ⁠145
The inn abutted on the pool
Named Hezekiah's, a sunken court
Where silence and seclusion rule,
Hemmed round by walls of nature's sort,
Base to stone structures seeming one ⁠150
E'en with the steeps they stand upon.
As a threedecker's sternlights peer
Down on the oily wake below,
Upon the sleek dark waters here
The inn's small lattices bestow ⁠155
A rearward glance. And here and there
In flaws the languid evening air
Stirs the dull weeds adust, which trail
In festoons from the crag, and veil
The ancient fissures, overtopped ⁠160
By the tall convent of the Copt,
Built like a lighthouse o'er the main.
Blind arches showed in walls of wane,
Sealed windows, portals masoned fast,
And terraces where nothing passed ⁠165
By parapets all dumb. No tarn
Among the Kaatskills, high above
Farmhouse and stack, last lichened barn
And logbridge rotting in remove—
More lonesome looks than this dead pool ⁠170
In town where living creatures rule.
Not here the spell might he undo;
The strangeness haunted him and grew.
But twilight closes. He descends
And toward the inner court he wends. ⁠175
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