Collected Poems: Volume Two. Alfred Noyes
And on the wall, the chair, the bed,
Is it the Dawn that splashes red,
High as the text where God is Love Hangs o'er her head? She does not move.
VIII
The clock dictates its old refrain:
All else is quiet; or, far away,
Shaking the world with new-born day,
There thunders past some mighty train:
The clock dictates its old refrain.
IX
The Dawn peers in with blood-shot eyes:
The crust, the broken cup are there!
She does not rise yet to prepare
Her scanty meal. God does not rise
And pluck the blood-stained sheet from her;
But Dawn peers in with haggard eyes.
THE DREAM-CHILD'S INVITATION
I
Once upon a time!—Ah, now the light is burning dimly. Peterkin is here again: he wants another tale! Don't you hear him whispering—The wind is in the chimley, The ottoman's a treasure-ship, we'll all set sail?
II
All set sail? No, the wind is very loud to-night:
The darkness on the waters is much deeper than of yore.
Yet I wonder—hark, he whispers—if the little streets are still as bright
In old Japan, in old Japan, that happy haunted shore.
III
I wonder—hush, he whispers—if perhaps the world will wake again
When Christmas brings the stories back from where the skies are blue,
Where clouds are scattering diamonds down on every cottage window-pane,
And every boy's a fairy prince, and every tale is true.
IV
There the sword Excalibur is thrust into the dragon's throat,
Evil there is evil, black is black, and white is white:
There the child triumphant hurls the villain spluttering into the moat;
There the captured princess only waits the peerless knight.
V
Fairyland is gleaming there beyond the Sherwood Forest trees,
There the City of the Clouds has anchored on the plain
All her misty vistas and slumber-rosy palaces
(Shall we not, ah, shall we not, wander there again?)
VI
"Happy ever after" there, the lights of home a welcome fling
Softly thro' the darkness as the star that shone of old,
Softly over Bethlehem and o'er the little cradled King
Whom the sages worshipped with their frankincense and gold.
VII
Once upon a time—perhaps a hundred thousand years ago— Whisper to me, Peterkin, I have forgotten when! Once upon a time there was a way, a way we used to know For stealing off at twilight from the weary ways of men.
VIII
Whisper it, O whisper it—the way, the way is all I need!
All the heart and will are here and all the deep desire!
Once upon a time—ah, now the light is drawing near indeed, I see the fairy faces flush to roses round the fire.
IX
Once upon a time—the little lips are on my cheek again, Little fairy fingers clasped and clinging draw me nigh, Dreams, no more than dreams, but they unloose the weary prisoner's chain And lead him from his dungeon! "What's a thousand years?" they cry.
X
A thousand years, a thousand years, a little drifting dream ago,
All of us were hunting with a band of merry men,
The skies were blue, the boughs were green, the clouds were crisping isles of snow …
… So Robin blew his bugle, and the Now became the Then.
THE TRAMP TRANSFIGURED
(AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF A CORN-FLOWER MILLIONAIRE)
I
All the way to Fairyland across the thyme and heather,
Round a little bank of fern that rustled on the sky,
Me and stick and bundle, sir, we jogged along together—
(Changeable the weather? Well—it ain't all pie!)
Just about the sunset—Won't you listen to my story?—
Look at me! I'm only rags and tatters to your eye!
Sir, that blooming sunset crowned this battered hat with glory!
Me that was a crawling worm became a butterfly—
(Ain't it hot and dry?
Thank you, sir, thank you, sir!) a blooming butterfly.
II
Well, it happened this way! I was lying loose and lazy,
Just as, of a Sunday, you yourself might think no shame,
Puffing little clouds of smoke, and picking at a daisy,
Dreaming of your dinner, p'raps, or wishful for the same: Suddenly, around that ferny bank there slowly waddled—
Slowly as the finger of a clock her shadow came—
Slowly as a tortoise down that winding path she toddled,
Leaning on a crookèd staff, a poor old crookèd dame,
Limping, but not lame,
Tick, tack, tick, tack, a poor old crookèd dame.
III
Slowly did I say, sir? Well, you've heard that funny fable
Consekint the tortoise and the race it give an 'are?
This was curiouser than that! At first I wasn't able
Quite to size the memory up that bristled thro' my hair:
Suddenly, I'd got it, with a nasty shivery feeling,
While she walked and walked and yet was not a bit more near—
Sir, it was the tread-mill earth beneath her feet a-wheeling
Faster than her feet could trot to heaven or anywhere,
Earth's revolvin' stair
Wheeling, while my wayside clump was kind of anchored there.
IV
Tick, tack, tick, tack, and just a little nearer, Inch and 'arf an inch she went, but never gained a yard: Quiet as a fox I lay; I didn't wish to scare 'er, Watching thro' the ferns, and thinking "What a rum old card!" Both her wrinkled tortoise eyes with yellow resin oozing, Both