Clarel/Part 1/Canto 34

34. They Tarry
"How solitary on the hill Sitteth the city; and how still-- How still!" From Vine the murmur came-- A cadence, as it were compelled Even by the picture's silent claim. That said, again his peace he held, Biding, as in a misty rain Some motionless lone fisherman By mountain brook. But Rolfe: "Thy word Is Jeremiah's, and here well heard. Ay, seer of Anathoth, behold, Yon object tallies with thy text. How then? Stays reason quite unvexed? Fulfillment here but falleth cold. That stable proof which man would fold, How may it be derived from things Subject to change and vanishings? But let that pass. All now's revised: Zion, like Rome, is Niebuhrized. Yes, doubt attends. Doubt's heavy hand Is set against us; and his brand Still warreth for his natural lord-- King Common-Place--whose rule abhorred Yearly extends in vulgar sway, Absorbs Atlantis and Cathay; Ay, reaches toward Diana's moon, Affirming it a clinkered blot, Deriding pale Endymion. Since thus he aims to level all, The Milky Way he'll yet allot For Appian to his Capital. Then tell, tell then, what charm may save Thy marvel, Palestine, from grave Whereto winds many a bier and pall Of old Illusion? What for earth? Ah, change irreverent,--at odds With goodly customs, gracious gods; New things elate so thrust their birth Up through dejection of the old, As through dead sheaths; is here foretold he consummation of the past, nd gairish dawning of a day Whose noon not saints desire to stay-- And hardly I? Who brake love's fast With Christ--with what strange lords may sup? The reserves of time seem marching up. But, nay: what novel thing may be, No germ being new? By Fate's decree Have not earth's vitals heaved in change Repeated? some wild element Or action been evolved? the range Of surface split? the deeps unpent? Continents in God's caldrons cast? And this without effecting so The neutralizing of the past, Whose rudiments persistent flow, From age to age transmitting, own, The evil with the good--the taint Deplored in Solomon's complaint. Fate's pot of ointment! Wilt have done, Lord of the fly, god of the grub? Need'st foul all sweets, thou Beelzebub?"

He ended.--To evade or lay Deductions hard for tender clay, Clarel recalled each prior word Of Rolfe which scarcely kept accord, As seemed, with much dropped latterly. or Vine, he twitched from ground a weed, Apart then picked it, seed by seed. Ere long they rise, and climbing greet thing preeminent in seat, Whose legend still can touch the heart: prompted one there to impart chapter of the Middle Age-- Which next to give. But let the page

The narrator's rambling way forget, And make to run in even flow His interrupted tale. And let Description brief the site foreshow.