Clarel/Part 3/Canto 29

29. Rolfe and the Palm
Pursued, the mounted robber flies Unawed through Kedron's plunged demesne: The clink, and clinking echo dies: He vanishes: a long ravine. And stealthy there, in little chinks

Betwixt or under slab-rocks, slinks The dwindled amber current lean.

Far down see Rolfe there, hidden low By ledges slant. Small does he show (If eagles eye), small and far off As Mother-Cary's bird in den Of Cape Horn's hollowing billow-trough, When from the rail where lashed they bide The sweep of overcurling tide,-- Down, down, in bonds the seamen gaze Upon that flutterer in glen Of waters where it sheltered plays,

While, over it, each briny hight Is torn with bubbling torrents white In slant foam tumbling from the snow Upon the crest; and far as eye Can range through mist and scud which fly, Peak behind peak the liquid summits grow.

By chance Rolfe won the rocky stair At base, and queried if it were Man's work or nature's, or the twain Had wrought together in that lane Of high ascent, so crooked with turns And flanked by coignes, that one discerns But links thereof in flights encaved, Whate'er the point of view. Up, slow He climbed for little space; then craved A respite, turned and sat; and, lo, The Tree in salutation waved Across the chasm. Remindings swell; Sweet troubles of emotion mount-- Sylvan reveries, and they well From memory's Bandusia fount; Yet scarce the memory alone, But that and question merged in one:

"Whom weave ye in, Ye vines, ye palms? whom now, Soolee? Lives yet your Indian Arcady? His sunburnt face what Saxon shows-- His limbs all white as lilies be-- Where Eden, isled, impurpled glows In old Mendanna's sea? Takes who the venture after me?  "Who now adown the mountain dell (Till mine, by human foot untrod-- Nor easy, like the steps to hell) In panic leaps the appalling crag, Alighting on the cloistral sod Where strange Hesperian orchards drag,

Walled round by cliff and cascatellc Arcades of Iris; and though lorn, A truant ship-boy overworn, Is hailed for a descended god? "Who sips the vernal cocoa's cream-- The nereids dimpling in the darkling stream? For whom the gambol of the tricksy dream-- Even Puck's substantiated scene, Yea, much as man might hope and more than heaven may mean?  "And whom do priest and people sue, In terms which pathos yet shall tone When memory comes unto her own, To dwell with them and ever find them true: 'Abide, for peace is here: Behold, nor heat nor cold we fear, Nor any dearth: one happy tide A dance, a garland of the year: Abide!' "But who so feels the stars annoy, Upbraiding him,--how far astray!-- That he abjures the simple joy, And hurries over the briny world away? "Renouncer! is it Adam's flight Without compulsion or the sin? And shall the vale avenge the slight By haunting thee in hours thou yet shalt win?"

He tarried. And each swaying fan Sighed to his mood in threnodies of Pan.