Poem: “Via Crucis” by Herman Melville

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American Literature – American Poetry – Herman Melville – Poems by Herman Melville – Clarel
< < < Canto 33: Easter
Canto 35: Epilogue > > >

Bethlehem

Canto 34: Via Crucis

Some leading thoroughfares of man
In wood-path, track, or trail began;
Though threading heart of proudest town,
They follow in controlling grade
A hint or dictate, nature’s own,
By man, as by the brute, obeyed.

Within Jerusalem a lane,
Narrow, nor less an artery main
(Though little knoweth it of din),
In part suggests such origin.
The restoration or repair,
Successive through long ages there,
Of city upon city tumbled,
Might scarce divert that thoroughfare,
Whose hill abideth yet unhumbled

Above the valley-side it meets.
Pronounce its name, this natural street’s:
The Via Crucis–even the way
Tradition claims to be the one
Trod on that Friday far away
By Him our pure exemplar shown.

‘Tis Whitsun-tide. From paths without,
Through Stephen’s gatc by many a vein
Convergent brought within this lane,
Ere sun-down shut the loiterer out–
As ’twere a frieze, behold the train!
Bowed water-carriers; Jews with staves;
Infirm gray monks; over-loaded slaves;
Turk soldiers–young, with home-sick eyes;
A Bey, bereaved through luxuries;
Strangers and exiles; Moslem dames
Long-veiled in monumental white,
Dumb from the mounds which memory claims;
A half-starved vagrant Edomite;
Sore-footed Arab girls, which toil
Depressed under heap of garden-spoil;
The patient ass with panniered urn;
Sour camels humped by heaven and man,
Whose languid necks through habit turn
For easc for ease they hardly gain.
In varied forms of fate they wend–

Or man or animal, ’tis one:
Cross-bearers all, alike they tend
And follow, slowly follow on.

But, lagging after, who is he
Called early every hope to test,
And now, at close of rarer quest,
Finds so much more the heavier tree?
From slopes whence even Echo’s gone,
Wending, he murmurs in low tone:
“They wire the world–far under sea

They talk; but never comes to me
A message from beneath the stone.”

Dusked Olivet he leaves behind,
And, taking now a slender wynd,
Vanishes in the obscurer town.

< < < Canto 33: Easter
Canto 35: Epilogue > > >

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

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Clarel

Bethlehem

Canto 34: Via Crucis

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