BY ROBERT A. SANDBERG
This volume collects all of Herman Melville’s poems except for a few that he included in prose works. Thus it contains Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866), Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (1876), John Marr and Other Sailors with Some Sea-Pieces (1888), and Timoleon Etc. (1891), followed by two uncompleted collections that Melville never published, Weeds and Wildings and Parthenope, and a group of uncollected poems and related prose pieces (all, with one exception, left unpublished by him).
Melville was a reader and composer of poetry throughout his career. During the eleven years preceding his decision in the late 1850s to begin composing the verse pieces that he attempted in 1860 to publish as a first volume of collected poems (to be titled Poems by Herman Melville), he composed poetry and songs for his prose writings, including Mardi and Moby-Dick. However, the poems or songs that Melville incorporated in the prose fiction he published from 1846 to 1857 are not taken out of context for inclusion in the present volume. Two poems from Mardi and Moby-Dick—Yoomy’s song from chapter 88 of Mardi (“Like the fish of the bright and twittering fin”) and the hymn read by Father Mapple in chapter 9 of Moby-Dick (“The ribs and terrors in the whale”)—were printed in 1993 by the Library of America (LOA) in volume 2 of American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century, edited by John Hollander. That volume also includes fifty-one of the poems printed in the present volume: fourteen from Battle-Pieces, thirteen from Clarel, eight from John Marr, twelve from Timoleon, two from Weeds and Wildings, and two from the uncollected poetry and prose-and-verse pieces, “Billy in the Darbies” and “Pontoosuc.” The text of “The Tuft of Kelp” from the “Sea-Pieces” section of John Marr and Other Sailors was printed in 2000 by LOA in American Sea Writing: A Literary Anthology, edited by Peter Neill. Like the texts printed in the present volume, the texts in the 1993 and 2000 LOA volumes are those of the related volumes of the Northwestern-Newberry (NN) edition of The Writings of Herman Melville, edited by Hershel Parker, Harrison Hayford, G. Thomas Tanselle, Alma A. MacDougall, Robert D. Madison, and Robert A. Sandberg and published by the Northwestern University Press and The Newberry Library. However, because the 1993 and 2000 LOA volumes were printed while the two final NN volumes were still in progress (Published Poems, 2009, and “Billy Budd, Sailor” and Other Uncompleted Writings, 2017), the slightly different, corrected texts of the NN volumes (and thus those of the present volume) supersede those of the 1993 and 2000 LOA volumes. For example, for the 2017 Uncompleted Writings volume the NN editors determined that Melville did not intend a final “e” in the title of the uncollected poem “Pontoosuc.”
The present volume includes (with the exceptions noted above) all the poems Melville is known to have composed from the late 1850s to the day of his death on September 28, 1891, both those he published and those he left in manuscript, unpublished, in various stages of near-completion. The texts used in this volume come from the following three NN volumes: Published Poems (Robert C. Ryan, Harrison Hayford, Alma MacDougall Reising, and G. Thomas Tanselle, eds., 2009), the source for Battle-Pieces, John Marr, Timoleon, and the uncollected poem, “Inscription For the Dead At Fredericksburgh”; Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (Harrison Hayford, Alma A. MacDougall, Hershel Parker, and G. Thomas Tanselle, eds., 1991), the source for Clarel; and “Billy Budd, Sailor” and Other Uncompleted Writings (Harrison Hayford, Alma A. MacDougall, Robert A. Sandberg, and G. Thomas Tanselle, eds., 2017), the source for Weeds and Wildings, Parthenope, “Rammon,” “Under the Rose,” “Billy in the Darbies,” and thirty-eight uncollected poems, including the verse-epistle, “To Daniel Shepherd.”
The NN editors had four main types of documents from which to choose copy-texts and sources of emendation that could be used to generate critical editions of the reading texts: the first editions of the printed volumes of poetry in which Melville participated at various stages of the printing and publishing process, the printer’s-copy manuscript used to set type for a first edition, galley or page proofs marked by Melville, and the uncompleted and unpublished manuscripts that he left behind in various stages of near-completion at the time of his death in 1891. For Clarel and the Published Poems volumes, the NN editors adopted as copy-texts and sources for emendation the manuscripts or first editions and associated surviving galley and page proofs that could be shown to contain his revisions or corrections. For the Uncompleted Writings volume—with two exceptions—the copy-texts were the surviving holograph manuscripts. The two exceptions involve the first-edition printings of the two poems he extracted from already inscribed manuscripts for publication in John Marr and Timoleon (see below). The NN texts (and thus the texts printed in the present volume) are critical texts because they do not correspond to any documentary texts—whether in print or manuscript—but instead include emendations of words, punctuation, and spelling that the editors concluded would best reflect Melville’s latest intention. In addition, following their editorial policy, the NN editors did not modernize punctuation, spelling, or capitalization to conform with modern usage, nor, when emending, did they impose consistency in punctuation, spelling, and capitalization in the reading texts or tables of contents (variations in spelling and capitalization were accepted in printed works before and during the years Melville was writing). This general description of the editorial work done on the NN volumes does not account for the unique situations that come up in connection with many of the poems and related prose pieces in this volume. For thorough discussions and explanations of how the editors worked with manuscripts, first editions, and galley and page proofs to produce critical reading texts, the reader is referred to the editorial appendices of the published NN volumes listed above.
There is no single holograph manuscript for Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War, nor were there new printings or editions of Battle-Pieces in Melville’s lifetime; thus the copy-text used for the NN edition is simply the text published by Harper & Brothers on 23 August 1866. The five poems that were published in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine prior to the printing of the book edition were considered as possible copy-texts for those poems, but the NN editors determined that the differences between those texts and the texts of the printed volume were probably due to changes Melville made later in printer’s copy for the Harper volume. The primary sources for most of the emendations made by the NN editors were the two copies of Battle-Pieces at Harvard (designated Copies A and C), which contain annotations and revisions by Melville.
The text of the first edition of Clarel was set from Melville’s manuscript, but that printer’s-copy manuscript is not known to survive; thus the copy-text used by the NN editors was the first edition published in two volumes by G. P. Putnam’s Sons in early June 1876—June 3 according to a letter Melville’s wife, Elizabeth Shaw Melville, wrote to Melville’s cousin, Catherine Gansevoort Lansing. There does exist one manuscript containing lines from Clarel inscribed in Melville’s hand: a twenty-one-line lyric, “Ditty of Aristippus” (corresponding to the opening lines of Canto 4, Part 3), which Melville copied out twelve years later, in 1888, in response to a written request on January 20 from the prominent anthologist Edmund Clarence Stedman for “one of your best known shorter poems, in your own handwriting.” The NN editors concluded that neither of the two manuscript variations from the 1876 edition, both in the last line—“revellers” instead of “revelers” and a period instead of an exclamation point—warranted an emendation in the NN text. A custom-bound copy of the Putnam edition at Harvard (designated Copy B) combines both first-edition volumes into one and contains notes for corrections and revisions in Melville’s hand—evidence taken into account by the NN editors when emending the copy-text.
Melville selected the De Vinne Press as printer of John Marr and Other Sailors with Some Sea-Pieces and personally financed the production of the twenty-five copies, finished in late August or early September 1888. His name appears nowhere in the book. Melville’s manuscript, “John Marr and Other Sailors,” in Harvard MS Am 188 (370), served as printer’s copy (with one exception related to “The Haglets” discussed below). Because he worked closely with the De Vinne Press, the NN editors were able to use the surviving galley and page proofs, which he had marked up extensively, as sources for emendations in the manuscript copy-text. They also used printed copies, which Melville continued to revise during the next three years. Having located eighteen of these printed copies into which Melville or his wife had inscribed revisions, the editors adopted eleven of these revisions.
No manuscript of “The Haglets” existed when the De Vinne compositors were setting type, so Melville had to create printer’s copy from two newspaper versions (one complete, the other abridged) that had been published three years earlier in 1885. The two newspaper versions were not titled “The Haglets,” but instead had the same title as that of an uncollected poem printed in the present volume—“The Admiral of the White.” Both the complete and the abridged versions were published on Sunday, May 17, 1885: the complete version in the Boston Herald and the abridged in the New York Tribune. To prepare printer’s copy for the De Vinne Press, Melville used ink-revised, scissored-apart sections of the abridged Tribune version, which he pasted onto leaves, leaving space between sections for the ink-inscribing of the missing lines taken from the complete Herald text. Revisions to the newspaper texts included revising the title from “The Admiral of the White” to “The Haglets.” Though the 1885 newspaper versions had the same title as an uncollected poem printed in the present volume, we can conclude from a note written by Melville’s wife on the first page of the manuscript of the uncollected poem (“Herman gave this to Tom—”) that Melville must have composed it before 1885—his brother Tom died in 1884.
Besides inserting into the John Marr printer’s copy leaves containing printed sections of the newspaper copy of a previously published poem, Melville also inserted the last three leaves from the manuscript of an unpublished prose-and-verse piece, “Rammon,” which were inscribed with the lines of a poem he titled—apparently after extracting the leaves—“The Enviable Isles.” When he inserted the leaves into the John Marr manuscript, he inscribed new foliation numbers to match the John Marr foliation. These three leaves are now filed at Harvard as the last three leaves in Houghton folder 25 of the John Marr and Other Sailors manuscript, MS Am 188 (370). Besides printing “The Enviable Isles” as part ofJohn Marr in the NN Published Poems volume, the NN editors restored it to its original location at the end of “Rammon” in the final NN volume, “Billy Budd, Sailor” and Other Uncompleted Writings—in which two locations it is also printed in the present volume.
Melville chose the Caxton Press as printer of Timoleon, which, like John Marr, he published privately, sometime from mid-May to mid-June 1891, just months before his death. As with John Marr, Melville’s name does not appear anywhere in the book. Unlike John Marr the front cover did not state the number of copies printed, but because first editions of both John Marr and Timoleon are equally scarce, the NN editors concluded that it was probably a similarly small number. The NN copy-text for Timoleon was Melville’s much-revised manuscript in Harvard MS Am 188 (387); the printer’s copy for the Caxton Press was a transcript of his manuscript—largely in his wife’s hand—also in Harvard MS Am 188 (387). No galley or page proofs are known to survive, but Melville’s extensive revisions in his manuscript, as well as revisions in his wife’s transcript, provided sources for emendation. At a late stage of his work on the volume, Melville inserted seven manuscript leaves that he had extracted from the manuscript of “An Afternoon in Naples in the Time of Bomba,” Harvard MS Am 188 (386.A.2 and 386.A.3). These seven leaves had constituted Canto 5 of the “Afternoon in Naples” poem and are now filed with the Timoleon manuscript as the last seven leaves in folder 17 of Harvard MS Am 188 (387). When relocating the leaves, Melville inserted a title and subtitle, “Pausilippo / In the Time of Bomba” at the top of the first leaf and refoliated the leaves to fit the Timoleon foliation scheme. Besides printing “Pausilippo” as part of Timoleon in the NN Published Poems volume, the NN editors restored those lines to their original location as Canto 5 of “An Afternoon in Naples in the Time of Bomba” in the final NN volume, “Billy Budd, Sailor” and Other Uncompleted Writings—in which two locations the lines are also printed in the present volume.
The manuscripts of the verse and associated prose of Weeds and Wildings were among the uncompleted manuscripts that Melville left behind when he died on September 28, 1891. Manuscript evidence shows that at one time he considered using the title “Meadows & Seas” for the collection. The various title-page drafts and tables of contents, which he continued in the late 1880s to revise and arrange for the projected volume, and his insertion of “four years” when revising an allusion to his wedding day, August 4, 1847, in an 1887 draft of the dedicatory “To Winnefred” (the allusion finally read “the fourth day of a certain bridal month, now four years more than four times ten years ago”), suggest that in August 1891, just one month before he died, he was intent on publication. The NN editors arranged the contents of Weeds and Wildings on the basis of two draft title pages and six draft tables of contents. The 161 leaves of the Weeds and Wildings manuscripts are at Harvard in Houghton Library files designated MS Am 188 (369.1.1, 369.1.2, 369.1.5) and MS Am 188 (369.3).
The two Parthenope poems and accompanying four prose pieces printed in the present volume reflect what the NN editors decided would have probably been the contents of Parthenope (so titled) if Melville had lived long enough to publish the volume: the fictional editor’s introductory essay, “House of the Tragic Poet”; the “Preface”; the dedicatory sketch of the speaker of the first poem, “To M. de Grandvin”; the poem, “At the Hostelry”; the dedicatory sketch of the speaker of the second poem, “To Major John Gentian”; and the poem “An Afternoon in Naples in the Time of Bomba.” Not printed in the present volume are five prose sketches that the NN editors labeled supplementary and five related fragments. With one exception (see below), the Parthenope manuscripts consist of 335 leaves that are in fourteen Houghton Library files designated MS Am 188 (386) A.1–3, B.1–8, and C.1–3. The one exception is the seven leaves that Melville extracted for publication as “Pausilippo” in Timoleon, which are now filed with the Timoleon manuscript (see above). The text of those seven leaves, as explained earlier, is printed in the NN edition (and thus in the present volume) both in Timoleon and in its original position in the Uncompleted Writings volume as Canto 5 of “An Afternoon in Naples in the Time of Bomba.”
“Rammon” and “Under the Rose” are two prose-and-verse pieces included here in their entirety. Another one, Billy Budd, Sailor, is represented by its concluding poem, “Billy in the Darbies,” but without the prose text that precedes it because of the length of that text and its availability in another Library of America volume (the third Melville volume). Twenty leaves of the “Rammon” manuscript contain the introductory prose sketch and the five verse paragraphs that introduce the poem, “The Enviable Isles.” Melville extracted the three leaves of “The Enviable Isles” manuscript from the original twenty-three-leaf “Rammon” manuscript for publication in John Marr. The twenty-leaf “Rammon” manuscript is in Houghton folder MS Am 188 (382); the extracted three-leaf lyric manuscript is filed as the last three leaves in Houghton folder 25 of the John Marr and Other Sailors manuscript, MS Am 188 (370). The first twenty leaves of the “Rammon” manuscript clearly indicate at least two main stages of composition. The first eight leaves are a clean copy inscribed in ink with just a few pencil revisions; the next twelve leaves are inscribed almost entirely in pencil and are heavily revised with cancellations, interlineations, and pinned patches and clips. Melville also foliated the last twelve leaves several times, using subscripts for inserted pages. As explained above, the text of “The Enviable Isles” is printed in the NN edition (and thus in the present volume) both in John Marr and in its original position in the Uncompleted Writings volume at the end of “Rammon.” The twenty-seven-leaf manuscript of “Under the Rose,” the second of the two prose-and-verse pieces included in the present volume, appears to be a fair copy inscribed in ink, though Melville did make a few revisions using pencil, ink, clips, and a patch. The manuscript is in Houghton Library folder MS Am 188 (369.4.2). Melville used the earliest version of “Billy in the Darbies” as a verse conclusion to a short headnote—similar to the introductory headnotes and concluding poems or sections of verse he included in John Marr and Other Sailors. During the last years of his life, Melville revised and expanded the headnote and ballad, which, combined, comprise the text of the nearly completed Billy Budd, Sailor. Three leaves of the earliest known version of “Billy in the Darbies” survive only because Melville used their versos when composing the “Story of Daniel Orme”—the pencil-inscribed versos of sheets 4, 16, and 17 of the “Orme” manuscript, filed in Houghton Library folder MS Am 188 (369.4.1). The latest version of the ballad is inscribed in ink on sheets 348–351 of the Billy Budd manuscript, filed in Houghton Library folder MS Am 188 (363).
We know the years in which Melville composed two of the thirty-eight uncollected poems printed in this volume. The well-documented provenances of both “Inscription For the Dead At Fredericksburgh” (1864) and “To Daniel Shepherd” (1859) include information about the exact year in which each was composed. Internal evidence within the other thirty-six poems, together with biographical conjecture and inference, might be used to approximate the years in which some of them may have been composed.
The Civil War subject of the uncollected poem “Inscription For the Dead At Fredericksburgh” links it to Battle-Pieces, but it was not published in that volume. In early 1864 Melville contributed an autograph of a poem at the request of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Bliss for inclusion in a volume to benefit the U.S. Sanitary Commission: Autograph Leaves of Our Country’s Authors (comp. Alexander Bliss and John Pendleton Kennedy; Baltimore: Cushings & Bailey, 1864). Shortly after sending the poem, titled “Inscription For the Slain At Fredericksburgh,” Melville composed a second autograph version of the poem, titled “Inscription For the Dead At Fredericksburgh,” and sent it with a letter on 22 March 1864 asking Bliss to “suppress” the first version and publish the second instead. Bliss was not able to publish Melville’s preferred second version, but he did change the title in the table of contents to nearly match that of the second version (“Inscription to the dead at Fredericksburgh”). The copy-text for this poem, which the NN editors did not emend, is the autograph manuscript of the second, revised version of the poem that Melville sent to Bliss to replace the first version. The revised version differs from the first in the use of “Dead” instead of “Slain” in the title, the insertion of “dreadful” before “glory” in the first line, and “Strewn” instead of “Strown” in the last line. Melville later adapted the poem for the last stanza of a Battle-Pieces poem, “Chattanooga.” The manuscript of the early version of the poem is now in the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin; the manuscript of the revised version is in the Bancroft-Bliss Collection at the Library of Congress.
The four-leaf manuscript of the uncollected poem “To Daniel Shepherd” is a fair copy inscribed in ink by Melville and is now located in the Melville Family Letters and Papers collection at the Berkshire Athenaeum. The poem is a verse-epistle addressed to the law partner of Melville’s brother, Allan, dated July 6, 1859. It is printed in the NN Correspondence volume, as well as in Hershel Parker’s “Historical Note” in the NN Uncompleted Writings volume. It is possible that the poem was never sent, or, if it was, Allan, who lived until 1872, kept it among his own papers in memory of his friend and law partner who died in 1870, for it was found among the papers inherited by Allan Melville’s granddaughter, Agnes Morewood.
With two exceptions, the manuscripts of the remaining thirty-six uncollected poems printed in the present volume are in the Herman Melville Papers collection at Houghton Library. The two exceptions are a manuscript of Part 1 of “Camoens,” which is in the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia, and the manuscript of “In a nutshell,” which is in the Melville Family Letters and Papers collection at the Berkshire Athenaeum. Most of the other uncollected poetry manuscripts are in Houghton Folder MS Am 188 (369.1.5); but several others are located as follows: “Madam Mirror” in MS Am 188 (369.1.3 and 369.1.4), “The Wise Virgins to Madam Mirror” in MS Am 188 (369.1.4), “The New Ancient of Days” in MS Am 188 (369.1.2 and 369.1.3), “A Reasonable Constitution” in MS Am 188 (383), and “To Tom” in MS Am 188 (388).
By adopting the texts of the Northwestern-Newberry edition, the present volume offers to the reader the results of the best scholarly efforts yet made to establish critical texts of the entire corpus of Melville’s poetry: both the poetry and related prose pieces that Melville published during his lifetime and the poetry and prose-and-verse writings he left unpublished at the time of his death.
The present edition is concerned only with representing the texts of the Northwestern-Newberry edition; it does not attempt to reproduce features of the typographic design.