The House-top

Herman Melville

No sleep. The sultriness pervades the air
 And binds the brain—a dense oppression, such
 As tawny tigers feel in matted shades,
 Vexing their blood and making apt for ravage.
 Beneath the stars the roofy desert spreads
 Vacant as Libya. All is hushed near by.
 Yet fitfully from far breaks a mixed surf
 Of muffled sound, the atheist roar of riot.
 Yonder, where parching Sirius set in drought
 Balefully glares red Arson—there—and there.
 The town is taken by its rats—ship-rats
 And rats of the wharves. All civil charms
 And priestly spells which late held hearts in awe—
 Fear-bound, subjected to a better sway
 Than sway of self; these like a dream dissolve,
 And man rebounds whole aeons back in nature.
 Hail to the low dull rumble, dull and dead,
 And ponderous drag that shakes the wall.
 Wise Draco comes, deep in the midnight roll
 Of black artillery; he comes, though late;
 In code corroborating Calvin’s creed
 And cynic tyrannies of honest kings;
 He comes, nor parlies; and the Town, redeemed,
 Gives thanks devout; nor, being thankful, heeds
 The grimy slur on the Republic’s faith implied,
 Which holds that Man is naturally good,
 And—more—is Nature’s Roman, never to be scourged.