Melville’s ‘Berg’

By Scott Horton

Caspar David Friedrich, The Wreck of the Hope (1824)

I saw a ship of material build

(Her standards set, her brave apparel on)

Directed as by madness mere

Against a solid iceberg steer,

Nor budge it, though the infactuate ship went down.

The impact made huge ice-cubes fall

Sullen in tons that crashed the deck;

But that one avalanche was all–

No other movement save the foundering wreck.

Along the spurs of ridges pale,

Not any slenderest shaft and frail,

A prism over glass-green gorges lone,

Toppled; or lace or traceries fine,

Nor pendant drops in grot or mine

Were jarred, when the stunned ship went down.

Nor sole the gulls in cloud that wheeled

Circling one snow-flanked peak afar,

But nearer fowl the floes that skimmed

And crystal beaches, felt no jar.

No thrill transmitted stirred the lock

Of jack-straw neddle-ice at base;

Towers undermined by waves–the block

Atilt impending– kept their place.

Seals, dozing sleek on sliddery ledges

Slipt never, when by loftier edges

Through the inertia ovrthrown,

The impetuous ship in bafflement went down.

Hard Berg (methought), so cold, so vast,

With mortal damps self-overcast;

Exhaling still thy dankish breath–

Adrift dissolving, bound for death;

Though lumpish thou, a lumbering one–

A lumbering lubbard loitering slow,

Impingers rue thee ad go slow

Sounding thy precipice below,

Nor stir the slimy slug that sprawls

Along thy dead indifference of walls.

–Herman Melville, The Berg: A Dream first published in John Marr and Other Sailors (1888)