Epilogue (Clarel)

by Herman Melville

　　

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EPILOGUE (Clarel)If Luther's day expand to Darwin's year, Shall that exclude the hope—foreclose the fear?Unmoved by all the claims our times avow,The ancient Sphinx still keeps the porch ofshade;And comes Despair, whom not her calm maycow,And coldly on that adamantine browScrawls undeterred his bitter pasquinade.But Faith (who from the scrawl indignantturns)With blood warm oozing from her woundedtrust,Inscribes even on her shards of broken urnsThe sign o' the cross—the spirit above the dust!Yea, ape and angel, strife and old debate—The harps of heaven and dreary gongs of hell;Science the feud can only aggravate—No umpire she betwixt the chimes and knell:The running battle of the star and clodShall run forever—if there be no God.Degrees we know, unknown in days before;The light is greater, hence the shadow more;And tantalized and apprehensive ManAppealing—Wherefore ripen us to pain?Seems there the spokesman of dumb Nature'strain.But through such strange illusions have theypassedWho in life's pilgrimage have baffled striven—Even death may prove unreal at the last,And stoics be astounded into heaven.Then keep thy heart, though yet butill-resigned—Clarel, thy heart, the issues there but mind;That like the crocus budding through thesnow—That like a swimmer rising from the deep—That like a burning secret which doth goEven from the bosom that would hoard andkeep;Emerge thou mayst from the last whelmingsea,And prove that death but routs life into victory.

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