Fevre Dream Page 0,61

her wheelhouse? She don't need it. The paddles would turn just as smartly without it. Why is our pilot house, and so many others, all fancied up with curlicues and carvings and trim, why is every steamer worth her name full of fine wood and carpets and oil paintings and jigsaw carpentry? Why do our chimneys have flowered tops? The smoke would come out just as easy if they were plain."

Marsh burped, and frowned.

"You could make steamers plain and simple," Jeffers concluded, "but the way they are, that makes them finer to look at, to ride on. It's the same with poetry, Cap'n. A poet could maybe say something straight out, sure enough, but when he puts it in rhyme and meter it becomes grander."

"Well, maybe," Marsh said dubiously.

"I bet I could find a poem even you would like," Jeffers said. "Byron wrote one, in fact. 'The Destruction of Sennacherib,' it's called."

"Where's that?"

"It's a who, not a where," Jeffers corrected. "A poem about a war, Cap'n. There's a marvelous rhythm to it. It gallops along as lively as 'Buffalo Gals.' " He stood up and straightened his coat. "Come with me, I'll show you."

Marsh finished the dregs of his coffee, pushed off from the table, and followed Jonathon Jeffers aft to the Fevre Dream's library. He collapsed gratefully in a big overstuffed armchair while the head clerk searched up and down the bookcases that filled the room and rose clear to the high ceiling. "Here it is," Jeffers said at last, pulling down a fair-sized volume. "I knew we had to have a book of Byron's poems somewhere." He leafed through the pages-a few had never been cut, and he sliced them apart with his fingernail-until he found what he was looking for. Then he struck a pose and read "The Destruction of Sennacherib."

The poem did have quite a rhythm to it, Marsh had to admit, especially with Jeffers reciting it. It wasn't no "Buffalo Gals," though. Still, he kind of liked it. "Not bad," he admitted when Jeffers had finished. "Didn't care for the end, though. Damn Bible-thumpers got to drag the Lord in most everywhere."

Jeffers laughed. "Lord Byron was no Bible-thumper, I can assure you," he said. "He was immoral, in fact, or so it was said." He took on a thoughtful look and began turning pages again.

"What are you lookin' for now?"

"The poem I was trying to recollect at the table," Jeffers said. "Byron wrote another poem about night, quite at odds with-ah, here it is," He glanced up and down the page, nodded. "Listen to this, Cap'n. The title is 'Darkness.' " He commenced to recite:

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.

The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars

Did wander darkling in the eternal space,

Rayless, and pathless, and the icy Earth

Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;

Mom came and went-and came, and brought no day,

And men forgot their passions in the dread

Of this their desolation; and all hearts

Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light...

The clerk's voice had taken on a hollow, sinister tone as he read; the poem went on and on, longer than any of the others. Marsh soon lost track of the words, but they touched him nonetheless, and cast a chill that was somehow frightening over the room. Phrases and bits of lines lingered in his mind; the poem was full of terror, of vain prayer and despair, of madness and great funeral pyres, of war and famine and men like beasts.

...-meal was brought

With blood, and each sate sullenly apart

Gorging himself in gloom; no Love was left;

All earth was but one thought-and that was Death

Immediate and inglorious; and the pang

Of famine fed upon all entrails-men

Died and their bones were tombless as their flesh;

The meagre by the meagre were devour'd,...

and Jeffers read on, evil dancing after evil, until at last he concluded:

They slept on the abyss without a surge-

The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,

The Moon, their mistress, had expired before;

The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,

And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need

Of aid from them-She was the Universe.

He closed the book.

"Ravings," Marsh said. "He sounds like a man taken with fever."

Jonathon Jeffers smiled wanly. "The Lord didn't even put in an appearance." He sighed. "Byron was of two minds about darkness, it seems to me. There's precious little innocence in that poem. I wonder if Cap'n York is familiar with it?"

"Of course he is," Marsh said, hoisting himself out of his chair. "Give