Yes, Time...Time...Time

“Yes, Time—all-healing Time—Time, great Philanthropist!—Time must befriend these thralls!" --Herman Melville, Mardi: and a Voyage Thither

"Yes! Time, the inexorable,—Time the physician and the conqueror,—Time the hopeful, rolls on, dragging us at his chariot wheels, wounded, suffering, unpitied,—but living still!" -- Scenes Beyond the Western Border, July 1852; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

Yes, Time to personify Time when writing of sufferers in bondage: in Mardi, manacled slaves; in "Scenes Beyond the Western Border," noble but defeated souls "chained to the rock" of mundane existence--like Andromeda or Prometheus.

what do you know

 C.— "What know ye of the attributes of their wondrous and miraculous life?"
Scenes Beyond the Western Border (August 1853) 

"... no more of your abstrusities; what know you mortals of us gods and demi-gods?" 
(Mardi) 

"What knowest thou?  or what know I?"
(Clarel) 

he will do the talking

"Don't trouble yourself, though, about writing; and don't trouble yourself about visiting; and when you do visit, don't trouble yourself about talking. I will do all the writing and visiting and talking myself."

(Herman Melville, letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne formerly dated June [1?] 1851; redated to early May 1851 by Hershel Parker)

"All I want is a good listener; I want to converse with you; and if you are absolutely dumb, why I will sometimes answer for you."

"Scenes Beyond the Western Border,"
Southern Literary Messenger 17 (June 1851): 372; and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army (Philadelphia, 1857), 228.

 "... [in Hawthorne] Melville found a good listener to whom he could talk philosophy, literature, or adventure without reserve."  (Leon Howard)

deceive, enlighten

"...either to deceive or undeceive, either to enlighten or obscure..."
(Pierre, 1852)

"...they deceive more than they enlighten the imaginations...." 
("Scenes Beyond the Western Border," August 1853)

The Importance of Being Frank

"my fine frank friend, poor Mark..." (Mardi)

 "Thank you for your frankness," said Paul; "frank myself, I love to deal with a frank man." (Israel Potter)

"What a madness & anguish it is, that an author can never – under no conceivable circumstances – be at all frank with his readers.  Could I, for one, be frank with them – how they would cease their railing." 
--Melville's Letter to Evert Duyckinck (14 December 1849)

By-the-way, though but a formality, friends should know each other's names. What is yours, pray? 

"Francis Goodman. But those who love me call me Frank." (Confidence-Man)

In "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" (1851-1853) the narrator's talkative traveling partner evolves from "Imaginary Friend" (called I. F. for short) to "Frank."  The idealized Imaginary Friend first receives a name in the August 1852 number of the Southern Literary Messenger:

 "But here comes Frank again: well, rest is evidently not a time for dull narrative." 

F.   Most industrious of scribblers, I give you good evening!

 --Scenes Beyond the Western Border, August 1852

A practical man and a realist, Frank usually gives the utilitarian view on any subject.  On the subjects of poetry and fiction, his pronouncements echo those of Herman Melville's critical friend Evert A. Duyckinck.

"But I have been writing, Frank, something for your especial approval..."
 --Scenes Beyond the Western Border, August 1853

Frank is not Frank anymore in the 1857 book version, Scenes and Adventures in the Army. In the book, Frank is identified only as "Friend."

he has a thing about long words

"They [the Magi-lawyers of Minda] were a vain and arrogant race. Upon the strength of their dealing in the dark, they affected even more mystery than belonged to them; when interrogated concerning their science, would confound the inquirer by answers couched in an extraordinary jargon, employing words almost as long as anacondas. But all this greatly prevailed with the common people."  (Mardi)

 

F.  "...It is enough to ruffle one, to have such a long word thrust at him, of a pleasant summer evening, and a thousand miles from a library."

C. "But, good heavens! do not condemn a word for its length. Paleontology is an almost poetical triumph..."  ("Scenes Beyond the Western Border")

also in Scenes and Adventures in the Army with some interesting revisions--now the library image is out, along with the phrase "of a pleasant summer evening"

which by the way is the kind of thing Melville would and did say,
in for example White-Jacket  (1850)

"Of a pleasant midnight, our good frigate, now somewhere off the Capes
of Virginia, was running on bravely..."

and the satirical "Anecdotes of Old Zack" (1847)

"Of a pleasant evening..."

and "I and My Chimney" (1856)

"...my betwisted old grape-vine, that of a summer evening leans in his elbow for cosy company at my window-sill...."

blue eyes or dark?

"Seldom yet have I known such blue eyes as hers, that were not docile, and would not follow a bold black one, as two meek blue-ribboned ewes, follow their martial leader. How glad am I that Pierre loves her so, and not some dark-eyed haughtiness..." 

-- Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1852) page 24.

"Wondrous fair of face, blue-eyed, and golden-haired, the bright blonde, Lucy, was arrayed in colors harmonious with the heavens. Light blue be thy perpetual color, Lucy; light blue becomes thee best—such the repeated azure counsel of Lucy Tartan's mother."  (Pierre, 1852)

 "... in Lucy's eyes, there seemed to shine all the blue glory of the general day, and all the sweet inscrutableness of the sky. And certainly, the blue eye of woman, like the sea, is not uninfluenced by the atmosphere. Only in the open air of some divinest, summer day, will you see its ultramarine,—its fluid lapis lazuli."  (Pierre, 1852)

 "For an instant, the fond, all-understood blue eyes of Lucy displaced the as tender, but mournful and inscrutable dark glance of Isabel."  (Pierre, 1852)

"Look: see these eyes,—this hair—nay, this cheek;—all dark, dark, dark,—and she—the blue-eyed—the fair-haired—oh, once the red-cheeked!" (Pierre, 1852)

"She tossed her ebon tresses over her; she fixed her ebon eyes on him."  (Pierre, 1852)

"Say, Pierre; doth not a funerealness invest me? Was ever hearse so plumed?—Oh, God! that I had been born with blue eyes, and fair hair! Those make the livery of heaven! Heard ye ever yet of a good angel with dark eyes, Pierre?—no, no, no—all blue, blue, blue—heaven's own blue—the clear, vivid, unspeakable blue, which we see in June skies, when all clouds are swept by."   (Pierre, 1852)

From Scenes Beyond the Western Border in the Southern Literary Messenger, May 1853:

Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light
Of a dark eye in woman! Far along,
From peak to peak, the rattling crags among
Leaps the live thunder! [quoting Byron]

F.—"The storm passes.  "That 'dark eye in woman,' introduced with such beautiful expression, but with all a poet's audacity, to illustrate an Alpine storm, pleases you, does it not?"

C.—" Can you condemn it? I love storms, but not those that gather in woman's eyes; they are fearful. Be assured, black eyes in woman never charmed me yet; their brilliancy seems to extinguish expression; or their dark colour to veil it."

F.—"Well, that's a novel theory: but what then do you like?"

C.—" Blue, in man or woman! But there is a rare kind—the loveliest and most expressive of all—which are changeable from grey to blue, as intellect or love for the time predominates."  Scenes Beyond the Western Border May 1853

UPDATE
 revised as follows in Scenes and Adventures in the Army:

My Friend and I rode together, and had much wonder and admiration to express upon our night adventure,—our happy fortune to witness so much beauty and sublimity. I remembered then, his omission of "the light of a dark eye in woman," in the only quotation of poetry I had ever heard him make. He said it was introduced with beautiful expression, but all the poet's audacity, to illustrate an Alpine storm. "Does it please you?" I love storms, I said, but not those that gather in woman's eyes; they are fearful, and so must have strength, if not loveliness; if, by dark, he mean black, their light is seldom pleasing to me; their brilliancy seems to extinguish expressions,—or, their color to veil it.

Friend.—Well, that's a novel theory; what do you like?

"Blue !—in man or woman. But there is a rare kind —the loveliest and most expressive of all—which are changeable, from gray to blue, as intellect or love for the time prevails—the beaming mirrors of a lovely soul!"