Herba Santa

Update for Eingesang (concerning Monody),
Geopfert (concerning Immolated),
and Geviertstriche (concerning To ———):

Timoleon, Etc. was the last work by Herman Melville published during his life. It was printed by Caxton Press in May 1891, in an edition of 25 copies. The Northwestern-Newberry edition will establish and make available the authoritative texts of these 42 poems. What we have for the time being, is The Poems of Herman Melville, edited by Douglas Robillard, where the following counter-argument to smoking ban is cited from (remember it was Melville’s last book…).

     I
After long wars when comes release
Not olive wands proclaiming peace
     An import dearer share
Than stems of Herba Santa hazed
     In autumn’s Indian air.
Of moods they breathe that care disarm,
They pledge us lenitive and calm.

     II
Shall code or creed a lure afford
To win all selves to Love’s accord?
When Love ordained a supper divine
     For the wide world of man,
What bickerings o’er his gracious wine!
Then strange new feuds began.

Effectual more in lowlier way,
     Pacific Herb, thy sensuous plea
The bristling clans of Adam sway
     At least to fellowship in thee!
Before thine altar tribal flags are furled,
Fain woulds’t thou make one hearthstone of the world.

     III
To scythe, to sceptre, pen and hod—
     Yea, sodden laborers dumb;
To brains overplied, to feet that plod,
In solace of the Truce of God
     The Calumet has come!

     IV
Ah for the world ere Raleigh’s find
     Never that knew this suasive balm
That helps when Gilead’s fails to heal,
     Helps by an interserted charm.

Insinuous thou that through the nerve
     Windest the soul, and so canst win
Some from repinings, some from sin,
     The Church’s aim thou dost subserve.

The ruffled fag fordone with care
     And brooding, Gold would ease this pain:
Him soothest thou and smoothest down
     Till some content return again.

Even ruffians feel thy influence breed
     Saint Martin’s summer in the mind,
They feel this last evangel plead,
As did the first, apart from creed,
     Be peaceful, man—be kind!

     V
Rejected once on higher plain,
O Love supreme, to come again
     Can this be thine?
Again to come, and win us too
     In likeness of a weed
That as a god didst vainly woo,
     As man more vainly bleed?

     VI
Forbear, my soul! and in thine Eastern chamber
     Rehearse the dream that brings the long release:
Through jasmine sweet and talismanic amber
     Inhaling Herba Santa in the passive Pipe of Peace.

Image: Kevin Cornell: Three-Legged Girl,
pen and ink on Vellum Bristol Board, November 8, 2006.