The Aeolian Harp

by Herman Melville

　　

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At The Surf InnList the harp in window wailing Stirred by fitful gales from sea:Shrieking up in mad crescendo— Dying down in plaintive key!Listen: less a strain idealThan Ariel's rendering of the Real. What that Real is, let hint A picture stamped in memory's mint.Braced well up, with beams aslant,Betwixt the continents sails the Phocion,For Baltimore bound from Alicant.Blue breezy skies white fleeces fleckOver the chill blue white-capped ocean:From yard-arm comes—"Wreck ho, a wreck!"Dismasted and adrift,Longtime a thing forsaken;Overwashed by every waveLike the slumbering kraken;Heedless if the billow roar,Oblivious of the lull,Leagues and leagues from shoal or shore,It swims—a levelled hull:Bulwarks gone—a shaven wreck,Nameless and a grass-green deck.A lumberman: perchance, in holdProstrate pines with hemlocks rolled.It has drifted, waterlogged,Till by trailing weeds beclogged: Drifted, drifted, day by day, Pilotless on pathless way.It has drifted till each plankIs oozy as the oyster-bank: Drifted, drifted, night by night, Craft that never shows a light;Nor ever, to prevent worse knell,Tolls in fog the warning bell.From collision never shrinking,Drive what may through darksome smother;Saturate, but never sinking,Fatal only to the other! Deadlier than the sunken reefSince still the snare it shifteth, Torpid in dumb ambuscadeWaylayingly it drifteth.O, the sailors—O, the sails!O, the lost crews never heard of!Well the harp of Ariel wailsThought that tongue can tell no word of!

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