Collected Poems: Volume Two. Alfred Noyes
beach we came like a school-treat safe to land;
And one of us took to religion at once; and the rest of the crew, tho' their hearts were mournful,
Capered about as Christy Minstrels, while Hook conducted the big brass band.
And the sun went round, and the moon went round, And, O, 'twas a thought that stung! There was none to believe we were broad-sheet pirates When the world was young!
Ah, yet (if ye stand me a noggin of rum) shall the old Blue Dolphin echo the story!
We'll hoist the white cross-bones again in our palmy harbour of Caribbee!
We'll wave farewell to our brown-skinned lasses and, chorussing out to the billows of glory,
Billows a-glitter with rum and gold, we'll follow the sunset over the sea!
While earth goes round, let rum go round! O, sing it as we sung! Half a hundred terrible pirates When the world was young!
THE NEWSPAPER BOY
I
Elf of the City, a lean little hollow-eyed boy
Ragged and tattered, but lithe as a slip of the Spring,
Under the lamp-light he runs with a reckless joy
Shouting a murderer's doom or the death of a King.
Out of the darkness he leaps like a wild strange hint,
Herald of tragedy, comedy, crime and despair,
Waving a poster that hurls you, in fierce black print
One word Mystery, under the lamp's white glare.
II
Elf of the night of the City he darts with his crew
Out of a vaporous furnace of colour that wreathes
Magical letters a-flicker from crimson to blue
High overhead. All round him the mad world seethes.
Hansoms, like cantering beetles, with diamond eyes
Run through the moons of it; busses in yellow and red
Hoot; and St. Paul's is a bubble afloat in the skies,
Watching the pale moths flit and the dark death's head.
III
Painted and powdered they shimmer and rustle and stream
Westward, the night moths, masks of the Magdalen! See,
Puck of the revels, he leaps through the sinister dream
Waving his elfin evangel of Mystery, Puck of the bubble or dome of their scoffing or trust, Puck of the fairy-like tower with the clock in its face, Puck of an Empire that whirls on a pellet of dust Bearing his elfin device thro' the splendours of space.
IV
Mystery—is it the scribble of doom on the dark, Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin, again? Mystery—is it a scrap of remembrance, a spark Burning still in the fog of a blind world's brain? Elf of the gossamer tangles of shadow and light, Wild electrical webs and the battle that rolls League upon perishing league thro' the ravenous night, Breaker on perishing breaker of human souls.
V
Soaked in the colours, a flake of the flying spray
Flung over wreckage and yeast of the murderous town,
Onward he flaunts it, innocent, vicious and gay,
Prophet of prayers that are stifled and loves that drown,
Urchin and sprat of the City that roars like a sea
Surging around him in hunger and splendour and shame,
Cruelty, luxury, madness, he leaps in his glee
Out of the mazes of mist and the vistas of flame.
VI
Ragged and tattered he scurries away in the gloom:
Over the thundering traffic a moment his cry
Mystery! Mystery!—reckless of death and doom
Rings; and the great wheels roll and the world goes by.
Lost, is it lost, that hollow-eyed flash of the light?—
Poor little face flying by with the word that saves,
Pale little mouth of the mask of the measureless night,
Shrilling the heart of it, lost like the foam on its waves!
THE TWO WORLDS
This outer world is but the pictured scroll
Of worlds within the soul,
A coloured chart, a blazoned missal-book
Whereon who rightly look
May spell the splendours with their mortal eyes
And steer to Paradise.
O, well for him that knows and early knows
In his own soul the rose
Secretly burgeons, of this earthly flower
The heavenly paramour:
And all these fairy dreams of green-wood fern,
These waves that break and yearn,
Shadows and hieroglyphs, hills, clouds and seas,
Faces and flowers and trees,
Terrestrial picture-parables, relate
Each to its heavenly mate.
O, well for him that finds in sky and sea
This two-fold mystery,
And loses not (as painfully he spells
The fine-spun syllables)
The cadences, the burning inner gleam,
The poet's heavenly dream.
Well for the poet if this earthly chart
Be printed in his heart,
When to his world of spirit woods and seas
With eager face he flees
And treads the untrodden fields of unknown flowers
And threads the angelic bowers,
And hears that unheard nightingale whose moan
Trembles within his own,
And lovers murmuring in the leafy lanes
Of his own joys and pains.
For though he voyages further than the flight
Of earthly day and night,
Traversing to the sky's remotest ends
A world that he transcends,
Safe, he shall hear the hidden breakers roar
Against the mystic shore;
Shall roam the yellow sands where sirens bare
Their breasts and wind their hair;
Shall with their perfumed tresses blind his eyes,
And still possess the skies.
He, where the deep unearthly jungles are,
Beneath his Eastern star
Shall pass the tawny lion in his den
And