Thread: Hidden Gems
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Unread 04-04-2017, 03:14 PM
Gregory Dowling Gregory Dowling is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Venice, Italy
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I'm a fan of Melville's longest poetical work, the narrative poem Clarel. It is set in Palestine and has an intriguing set of characters, Americans, Englishmen, Swedes, Jews, Arabs, with a great mix of religious beliefs and disbeliefs. Just to give you some flavour of the verse (which some have described as clunky, being rhyming tetrameter), here is a section which describes the effect of a rock-fall followed by the appearance of a rainbow:

-----And came a rush, a roar -
Aloof, but growing more and more,
Nearer and nearer. They invoke
The long Judaic range, the hight
Of nearer mountains hid from sight
By the blind mist. Nor spark nor smoke
Of that plunged wake their eyes might see;
But, hoarse in hubbub, horribly,
With all its retinue around -
Flints, dust, and showers of splintered stone,
An avalanche of rock down tore,
In somerset from each rebound -
Thud upon thump - down, down and down -
And landed. Lull. Then shore to shore
Rolled the deep echo, fold on fold,
Which, so reverberated, bowled
And bowled down the long El Ghor.

They turn; and, in that silence sealed,
What works there from behind the veil?
A counter object is revealed -
A thing of heaven, and yet how frail:
Up in thin mist above the sea
Humid is formed, and noiselessly,
The fog-bow: segment of an oval
Set in a colorless removal
Against a vertical shaft, or slight
Slim pencil of an aqueous light.
Suspended there, the segment hung
Like to the May-wreath that is swung
Against the pole. It showed half spent -
Hovered and trembled, paled away, and - went.
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