harps, wolves, memory

THE AEOLIAN HARP

At The Surf Inn

List the harp in window wailing
Stirred by fitful gales from sea:

Shrieking up in mad crescendo—
Dying down in plaintive key!

Listen: less a strain ideal

Than Ariel's rendering of the Real.

What that Real is, let hint

A picture stamped in memory's mint....  --Herman Melville

The emphasis on memory, and Melville's virtuosity in deploying its varying tropes, is meant, thereby, as touchstone, a passkey into the collection at large. It is in this respect that "The Aeolian Harp" does immediate good service.
--A. Robert Lee, "A Picture Stamped in Memory's Mint" in Melville as Poet

It is near midnight. Silence reigns in the desert; but now and then, come the cries of wolves from the mountains. They give an almost supernatural tone to these solemn solitudes. The repose which twenty hours of excitement and toil demand, is banished. Hark! how they howl! Be grandly dreary, and ye will be attuned to the heart! Yes, never better to a sentimental girl, the gentlest breathings of an Æolian harp. Ah! how very doleful is that plaint! Never, never the doleful! Give me the placid calm, with which the soul may revel in fairy creations, adorned by all the flowers of thought, or proud action, the storm of wild and passionate will. The gilded and painted memory, or fierce oblivion. --August 1852 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures