Explore "Commemorative of a Naval Victory (Poems from Battle Pieces)" by Herman Melville on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Sailors there are of the gentlest breed, / Yet strong, like every goodly thing; / The discipline of arms refines, / And the wave gives tempering.
The damasked blade its beam can fling; / It lends the last grave grace: / The hawk, the hound, and sworded nobleman / In Titian's picture for a king, / Are of hunter or warrior race.
In social halls a favored guest / In years that follow victory won, / How sweet to feel your festal fame / In woman's glance instinctive thrown: / Repose is yours-your deed is known, / It musks the amber wine; / It lives, and sheds a light from storied days / Rich as October sunsets brown, / Which make the barren place to shine.
But seldom the laurel wreath is seen / Unmixed with pensive pansies dark; / There's a light and a shadow on every man / Who at last attains his lifted mark- / Nursing through night the ethereal spark.
Elate he never can be; / He feels that spirit which glad had hailed his worth, / Sleep in oblivion. -The shark / Glides white through the phosphorus sea.