Tag Archives: Melville

“In the Prison Pen” by Herman Melville [w/ Audio]

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Listless he eyes the palisades
   And sentries in the glare;
 'Tis barren as a pelican-beach --
   But his world is ended there.

Nothing to do; and vacant hands
   Bring on the idiot-pain;
 He tries to think -- to recollect,
   But the blur is on his brain.

Around him swarm the plaining ghosts
   Like those on Virgil's shore --
 A wilderness of faces dim,
   And pale ones gashed and hoar.

A smiting sun. No shed, no tree;
   He totters to his lair --
 A den that sick hands dug in earth
   Ere famine wasted there,

Or, dropping in his place, he swoons,
   Walled in by throngs that press,
 Till forth from the throngs they bear him
   dead --
      Dead in his meagerness.

“Art” by Herman Melville [w/ Audio]

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In placid hours well-pleased we dream
 Of many a brave unbodied scheme.
 But form to lend, pulsed life create,
 What unlike things must meet and mate:
 A flame to melt -- a wind to freeze;
 Sad patience -- joyous energies;
 Humility -- yet pride and scorn;
 Instinct and study; love and hate;
 Audacity -- reverence. These must mate,
 And fuse with Jacob's mystic heart,
 To wrestle with the angel -- Art.