Conrad Potter Aiken

Here you will find the Poem Herman Melville of poet Conrad Potter Aiken

Herman Melville

`My towers at last!?? 
What meant the word 
from what acknowledged circuit sprung 
and in the heart and on the tongue 
at sight of few familiar birds 
when seaward his last sail unfurled 
to leeward from the wheel once more 
bloomed the pale crags of haunted shore 
that once-more-visited notch of world: 
and straight he knew as known before 
the Logos in Leviathan?s roar 
he deepest sounding with his lead 
who all had fathomed all had said. 


Much-loving hero?towers indeed 
were those that overhung your log 
with entries of typhoon and fog 
and thunderstone for Adam?s breed: 
man?s warm Sargasso Sea of faith 
dislimned in light by luck or fate 
you for mankind set sail by hate 
and weathered it, and with it death. 
And now at world?s end coasting late 
in dolphined calms beyond the gate 
which Hercules flung down, you come 
to the grim rocks that nod you home. 
Depth below depth this love of man: 
among unnumbered and unknown 
to mark and make his cryptic own 
one landfall of all time began: 
of all life?s hurts to treasure one 
and hug it to the wounded breast, 
in this to dedicate the rest, 
all injuries received or done. 
Your towers again but towers now blest 
your haven in a shoreless west 
o mariner of the human soul 
who in the landmark notched the Pole 
and in the Item loved the Whole.