46 - Aurora-Borealis*
Aurora-Borealis.
Commemorative of the Dissolution of Armies at the Peace.
(May, 1865.)
What power disbands the Northern Lights
After their steely play?
The lonely watcher feels an aweIn his bound sheets of Battle-Pieces (Copy C), Melville underlined this line in pencil and inscribed a vertical slash to the left of it in the margin and another, smaller slash after "awe". Next to a corresponding slash in the top margin, he then inscribed "The watcher feels a creeping awe". The implied revision reduces the loneliness of the watcher while increasing his growing consciousness of the natural wonder.
Of Nature's sway,
As when appearing,
He marked their flashed uprearing
In the cold gloom—
Retreatings and advancings,
(Like dallyings of doom),
Transitions and enhancings,
And bloody ray.
The phantom-host has faded quite,
Splendor and Terror gone—
Portent or promise—and gives way
To pale, meek Dawn;
The coming, going,
Alike in wonder showing—
Alike the God,
Decreeing and commanding
The million blades that glowed,
The muster and disbanding—
Midnight and Morn.