Poem: “The Fulfillment” by Herman Melville

Clarel

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American Literature – American Poetry – Herman Melville – Poems by Herman Melville – Clarel
< < < Canto 18: Night
Canto 20: Vale of Ashes > > >

JERUSALEM

Canto 19: The Fulfillment

Such passion!–But have hearts forgot
That ties may form where words be not?
The spiritual sympathy
Transeends the social. Which appears
In that presentiment, may be,
Of Clarel’s inquietude of fears
Proved just.
Yes, some retreat to win
Even more secluded than the court
The Terra Santa locks within:
Celio had found withdrawn resort
And lodging in the deeper town.

There, by a gasping ill distressed–
Such as attacks the hump-bowed one–
After three days the malady pressed:
He knew it, knew his course was run,
And, turning toward the wall, found rest.
‘Twas Syrians watched the parting hour–
And Syrian women shrilled the cry
That wailed it. This, with added store,
Learned Clarel, putting all else by
To get at items of the dead.
Nor, in the throb that casts out fear,
Aught recked he of a scruple here;
But, finding leaves that might bestead,

The jotted journaled thoughts he read.
A second self therein he found,
But stronger–with the heart to brave
All questions on that primal ground
Laid bare by faith’s receding wave.
But lo, arrested in event–
Hurried down Hades’ steep descent;
Cut off while in progressive stage
Perchance, ere years might more unfold:
Who young dies, leaves life’s tale half told.
How then? Is death the book’s fly-page?
Is no hereafter? If there be,
Death foots what record? how forestalls
Acquittance in eternity?
Advance too, and through age on age?
Here the tree lies not as it falls;
For howsoe’er in words of man
The word and will of God be feigned,
No incompletion’s heaven ordained.
Clarel, through him these reveries ran.

< < < Canto 18: Night
Canto 20: Vale of Ashes > > >

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

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Clarel

JERUSALEM

Canto 19: The Fulfillment

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