Poem: “Prelusive” by Herman Melville

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American Literature – American Poetry – Herman Melville – Poems by Herman Melville – Clarel
< < < Canto 34: Mortmain Reappears
Canto 36: Sodom > > >

The Wilderness

Canto 35: Prelusive

In Piranesi’s rarer prints,
Interiors measurelessly strange,
Where the distrustful thought may range
Misgiving still–what mean the hints?
Stairs upon stairs which dim ascend
In series from plunged Bastiles drear–
Pit under pit; long tier on tier
Of shadowed galleries which impend
Over cloisters, cloisters without end;
The hight, the depth–the far, the near;
Ring-bolts to pillars in vaulted lanes,
And dragging Rhadamanthine chains;
These less of wizard influence lend
Than some allusive chambers closed.
Those wards of hush are not disposed
In gibe of goblin fantasy–
Grimacc unclean diablery:
Thy wings, Imagination, span
Ideal truth in fable’s seat:

The thing implied is one with man,
His penetralia of retreat–
The heart, with labyrinths replete:
In freaks of intimation see
Paul’s “mystery of iniquity:”
Involved indeed, a blur of dream;
As, awed by scruple and restricted
In first design, or interdicted
By fate and warnings as might seem;
The inventor miraged all the maze,
Obscured it with prudential haze;
Nor less, if subject unto question,
The egg left, egg of the suggestion.
Dwell on those etchings in the night,
Those touches bitten in the steel
By aqua-fortis, till ye feel
The Pauline text in gray of light;
Turn hither then and read aright.

For ye who green or gray retain
Childhood’s illusion, or but feign;
As bride and suit let pass a bier–
So pass the coming canto here.

< < < Canto 34: Mortmain Reappears
Canto 36: Sodom > > >

American Literature – American Poetry – Herman Melville – Poems by Herman Melville – Clarel

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The Wilderness

Canto 35: Prelusive

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