"A Canticle: Significant Of The National Exaltation Of Enthusiasm At The Close Of The War" by Herman Melville

A Canticle:
Significant Of The National Exaltation
Of Enthusiasm At The Close Of The War
By Herman Melville

O the precipice Titanic

Of the congregated Fall,

And the angle oceanic

Where the deepening thunders call—

And the Gorge so grim,

And the firmamental rim!

Multitudinously thronging

The waters all converge,

Then they sweep adown in sloping

Solidity of surge.

The Nation, in her impulse

Mysterious as the Tide,

In emotion like an ocean

Moves in power, not in pride;

And is deep in her devotion

As Humanity is wide.

Thou Lord of hosts victorious,

The confluence Thou hast twined;

By a wondrous way and glorious

A passage Thou dost find—

A passage Thou dost find:

Hosanna to the Lord of hosts,

The hosts of human kind.

Stable in its baselessness

When calm is in the air,

The Iris half in tracelessness

Hovers faintly fair.

Fitfully assailing it

A wind from heaven blows,

Shivering and paling it

To blankness of the snows;

While, incessant in renewal,

The Arch rekindled grows,

Till again the gem and jewel

Whirl in blinding overthrows—

Till, prevailing and transcending,

Lo, the Glory perfect there,

And the contest finds an ending,

For repose is in the air.

But the foamy Deep unsounded,

And the dim and dizzy ledge,

And the booming roar rebounded,

And the gull that skims the edge!

The Giant of the Pool

Heaves his forehead white as wool—

Toward the Iris every climbing

From the Cataracts that call—

Irremovable vast arras

Draping all the Wall.

The Generations pouring

From times of endless date,

In their going, in their flowing

Ever form the steadfast State;

And Humanity is growing

Toward the fullness of her fate.

Thou Lord of hosts victorious,

Fulfill the end designed;

By a wondrous way and glorious

A passage Thou dost find—

A passage Thou dost find:

Hosanna to the Lord of hosts,

The hosts of human kind.