Collected Poems: Volume Two. Alfred Noyes
What about old Darwin and the hat that brought forth rabbits,
Mud and slime that growed into the pomp of Ninevey?
What if there should be
One great Power beneath it all, one God in you and me?
XVII
Anyway, it seemed to me I'd struck the world's pump-handle!
"Back with that three ha'pence, Bill," I mutters, "or you're lost."
Back I hurries thro' the dusk where, shining like a candle,
Pale before the sunset stood that fairy finger-post.
Sir, she wasn't there! I'd struck the place where all roads crost, All the roads in all the world. She couldn't yet have trotted Even to the … Hist! a stealthy step behind? A ghost? Swish! A flying noose had caught me round the neck! Garotted! Back I staggered, clutching at the moonbeams, yus, almost Throttled! Sir, I boast Bill is tough, but … when it comes to throttling by a ghost!
* * * *
XVIII
Winged like a butterfly, tall and slender
Out It steps with the rope on its arm.
"Crumbs," I says, "all right! I surrender!
When have I crossed you or done you harm?
Ef you're a sperrit," I says, "O, crikey, Ef you're a sperrit, get hence, vamoose!" Sweet as music, she spoke—"I'm Psyche!"— Choking me still with her silken noose.
XIX
Straight at the word from the ferns and blossoms
Fretting the moon-rise over the downs,
Little blue wings and little white bosoms,
Little white faces with golden crowns
Peeped, and the colours came twinkling round me,
Laughed, and the turf grew purple with thyme,
Danced, and the sweet crushed scents nigh drowned me,
Sang, and the hare-bells rang in chime.
XX
All around me, gliding and gleaming,
Fair as a fallen sunset-sky,
Butterfly wings came drifting, dreaming,
Clouds of the little folk clustered nigh,
Little white hands like pearls uplifted
Cords of silk in shimmering skeins,
Cast them about me and dreamily drifted
Winding me round with their soft warm chains.
XXI
Round and round me they dizzily floated,
Binding me faster with every turn:
Crumbs, my pals would have grinned and gloated
Watching me over that fringe of fern,
Bill, with his battered old hat outstanding
Black as a foam-swept rock to the moon,
Bill, like a rainbow of silks expanding
Into a beautiful big cocoon—
XXII
Big as a cloud, though his hat still crowned him,
Yus, and his old boots bulged below:
Seas of colour went shimmering round him,
Dancing, glimmering, glancing a-glow!
Bill knew well what them elves were at, sir—
Ain't you an en-to-mol-o-gist?
Well, despite of his old black hat, sir,
Bill was becoming—a chrysalist.
* * * *
XXIII
Muffled, smothered in a sea of emerald and opal,
Down a dazzling gulf of dreams I sank and sank away,
Wound about with twenty thousand yards of silken rope, all
Shimmering into crimson, glimmering into grey,
Drowsing, waking, living, dying, just as you regards it,
Buried in a sunset-cloud, or cloud of breaking day,
'Cording as from East or West yourself might look towards it,
Losing, gaining, lost in darkness, ragged, grimy, gay,
'And-cuffed, not to say
Gagged, but both my shoulders budding, sprouting white as May.
XXIV
Sprouting like the milky buds o' hawthorn in the night-time,
Pouting like the snowy buds o' roses in July,
Spreading in my chrysalist and waiting for the right time,
When—I thought—they'd bust to wings and Bill would rise and fly, Tick, tack, tick, tack, as if it came in answer, Sweeping o'er my head again the tide o' dreams went by— I must get to Piddinghoe to-morrow if I can, sir, Tick, tack, a crackle in my chrysalist, a cry! Then the warm blue sky Bust the shell, and out crept Bill—a blooming butterfly!
* * * *
XXV
Blue as a corn-flower, blazed the zenith: the deepening East like a scarlet poppy
Burned while, dazzled with golden bloom, white clouds like daisies, green seas like wheat,
Gripping the sign-post, first, I climbs, to sun my wings, which were wrinkled and floppy,
Spreading 'em white o'er the words No Road, and hanging fast by my six black feet.
XXVI
Still on my head was the battered old beaver, but through it my clubbed antennæ slanted,
("Feelers" yourself would probably call 'em) my battered old boots were hardly seen
Under the golden fluff of the tail! It was Bill, sir, Bill, though highly enchanted,
Spreading his beautiful snow-white pinions, tipped with orange, and veined with green.
XXVII
Yus, old Bill was an Orange-tip, a spirit in glory, a blooming Psyche!
New, it was new from East to West this rummy old world that I dreamed I knew,
How can I tell you the things that I saw with my—what shall I call 'em?—"feelers?"—O, crikey, "Feelers?" You know how the man born blind described such colours as scarlet or blue.
XXVIII
"Scarlet," he says, "is the sound of a trumpet, blue is a flute," for he hasn't a notion!
No, nor nobody living on earth can tell it him plain, if he hasn't the sight!
That's how it stands with ragged old Bill, a-drift and a-dream on a measureless ocean,
Gifted wi' fifteen new-born senses, and seeing you blind to their new strange light.
XXIX
How can I tell you? Sir, you must wait, till you die like Bill, ere you understand it!
Only—I saw—the same as a bee that strikes to his hive ten leagues away—
Straight as a die, while I winked and blinked on that sun-warmed wood and my wings expanded
(Whistler drawings that men call wings)—I saw—and I flew—that's all I can say.
XXX
Flew over leagues of whispering wonder, fairy forests and flowery palaces,