“Seedsmen of old Saturn’s land,
Love and peace went hand in hand,
And sowed the Era Golden!
“Golden time for man and mead:
Title none, nor title-deed,
Nor any slave, nor Soldan.
“Venus burned both large and bright,
Honey-moon from night to night,
Nor bride, nor groom waxed olden.
“Big the tears, but ruddy ones,
Crushed from grapes in vats and tuns
Of vineyards green and golden!
“Sweet to sour did never sue,
None repented ardor true—
Those years did so embolden.
“Glum Don Graveairs slunk in den:
Frankly roved the gods with men
In gracious talk and golden.
“Thrill it, cymbals of my rhyme,
Power was love, and love in prime,
Nor revel to toil beholden.
“Back, come back, good age, and reign,
Goodly age, and long remain—
Saturnian Age, the Golden!”
The masquer gone, by stairs that climb,
In seemly sort, the friars withdrew;
And, waiting that, the Islesman threw
His couplets of the Arcadian time,
Then turning on the pilgrims: “Hoo!
“The bird of Paradise don’t like owls:
A handful of acorns after the cowls!”
But Clarel, bantered by the song,
Sad questioned, if in frames of thought
And feeling, there be right and wrong;
Whether the lesson Joel taught
Confute what from the marble’s caught
In sylvan sculpture—Bacchant, Faun,
Or shapes more lax by Titian drawn.
Such counter natures in mankind—
Mole, bird, not more unlike we find:
Instincts adverse, nor less how true
Each to itself. What clew, what clew?
From Clarel: A Poem, and a Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1876) by Herman Melville. This poem is in the public domain.