Herman Melville

In his lifetime, Herman Melville (1819-1891) enjoyed some brief literary fame, not for his novel Moby Dick but for Typee and Omoo, his South Seas tales, and certainly not for his poetry, which tilted toward the stilted. Since a nearly deadly metrical regularity characterizes his verses, the poem featured here might have been a bold experiment. The last long line is relatively funky; line 4 more so. Nevertheless, the poem is spared neither the doggerelist’s sing-songiness, nor the bad poet’s clichéd sentiments, nor the wretched poet’s clunky metaphor (which in this case, is both lachrymose and lactose).

Enjoy!

Old Age in His Ailing

Old Age in his ailing
At youth will be railing
It scorns youth’s regaling
Pooh-pooh it does, silly dream;
But me, the fool, save
From waxing so grave
As, reduced to skimmed milk, to slander the cream.
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