David's Well canto 28

[herm melville]

All,

     The Lyonese has departed. Ungar also prepares to leave. Don Hannibal is of to Hebron. 

     Clarel finds David's well and ponders:

  "But who will bring to me

    That living water which who drinks

    He thirsteth not again!       ll. 72-74

    "Yearnest for peace so? sick of strife?

    Yet how content thee with routine

     Worldly? how mix with tempers keen

     And narrow like the knife? how live

     At all, if once a fugitive

     From thy own nobler part, though pain

     Be portion inwrought with the grain?"

Such questions.    John G

[Scott Norsworthy]

Same questions are reformulated in Melville's poem The Enthusiast, privately published in Timoleon.

About "The Enthusiast" William Shurr observed, 

"One seems to find here some of Melville's deepest struggles and triumphs, to see him speaking in propria persona; but the Enthusiast is a fanatic... The question is put strongly, four different times, whether youthful magnanimity, 'spirits that worship light,' heart, faith, Truth, on the one hand, shall yield under the influence of 'Time' to ignobility, 'interest,' worldliness, the 'loud gregarious lies' of the marketplace."  -- The Mystery of Iniquity, page 162.

Another poetical expression of the same existential dilemma appears in Melville's manuscript verses on Camoens "Before" and "After." Bottom line: the world is base, especially After:

CAMOENS IN THE HOSPITAL

What now avails the pageant verse,
Trophies and arms with music borne ?
Base is the world ; and some rehearse
Now noblest meet ignoble scorn,
Vain now thy ardour, vain thy fire,
Delirium mere, unsound desire ;
Fate's knife hath ripped thy corded lyre.
Exhausted by the exacting lay,
Thou dost but fall a surer prey
To wile and guile ill understood ;
While they who work them, fair in face,
Still keep their strength in prudent place,
And claim they worthier run life's race,
Serving high God with useful good. 

https://books.google.com/books?id=9O4OAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA414&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false

Considering how negatively Melville depicts the "fair in face" in this Camoens After poem, beware that ruddy-cheeked Russian who hails Clarel in Clarel Part 4 Canto 28 with a "fair accosting word" about the Prodigal. Though impressively tall and strong and good-looking,  and confidently religious, he might possibly be one of the bad guys:

But here, in fair accosting word,
A stranger's happy hail he heard
Descending from a vineyard nigh.
He turned: a pilgrim pleased his eye ⁠90
(A Muscovite, late seen by shrine)
Good to behold--fresh as a pine--
Elastic, tall; complexion clear
As dawn in frosty atmosphere
Rose-tinged.

Seems to me he might not get the Prodigal as well as he claims to. 

https://youtu.be/-K1AOIPr7Go