Collected Poems: Volume Two. Alfred Noyes
Hope had no meaning there:
A yard above my head the sky
Could only mock at prayer.
VII
E'en as I groped along, the gloom
Suddenly shook at my feet!
O, strangely as from a rending tomb
In resurrection, sweet
Swift wings tumultuously beat
Away! I paused to hark—
O, birds of thought, too fair, too fleet
To follow across the dark!
VIII
Yet, like a madman's dream, there came
One fair swift flash to me
Of distances, of streets a-flame
With joy and agony,
And further yet, a moon-lit sea
Foaming across its bars,
And further yet, the infinity
Of wheeling suns and stars,
IX
And further yet … O, mist of suns
I grope amidst your light,
O, further yet, what vast response
From what transcendent height?
Wild wings that burst thro' death's dim night
I can but pause and hark;
For O, ye are too swift, too white,
To follow across the dark!
X
Mist in the valley, yet I saw,
And in my soul I knew
The gleaming City whence I draw
The strength that then I drew,
My misty pathway to pursue
With steady pulse and breath
Through these dim forest-ways of dew
And darkness, life and death.
A SONG OF THE PLOUGH
I
(Morning.)
Idle, comfortless, bare,
The broad bleak acres lie:
The ploughman guides the sharp ploughshare
Steadily nigh.
The big plough-horses lift
And climb from the marge of the sea,
And the clouds of their breath on the clear wind drift
Over the fallow lea.
Streaming up with the yoke,
Brown as the sweet-smelling loam,
Thro' a sun-swept smother of sweat and smoke
The two great horses come.
Up thro' the raw cold morn
They trample and drag and swing;
And my dreams are waving with ungrown corn
In a far-off spring.
It is my soul lies bare
Between the hills and the sea:
Come, ploughman Life, with thy sharp ploughshare,
And plough the field for me.
II
(Evening.)
Over the darkening plain
As the stars regain the sky,
Steals the chime of an unseen rein
Steadily nigh.
Lost in the deepening red
The sea has forgotten the shore:
The great dark steeds with their muffled tread
Draw near once more.
To the furrow's end they sweep
Like a sombre wave of the sea,
Lifting its crest to challenge the deep
Hush of Eternity.
Still for a moment they stand,
Massed on the sun's red death,
A surge of bronze, too great, too grand,
To endure for more than a breath.
Only the billow and stream
Of muscle and flank and mane
Like darkling mountain-cataracts gleam
Gripped in a Titan's rein.
Once more from the furrow's end
They wheel to the fallow lea,
And down the muffled slope descend
To the sleeping sea.
And the fibrous knots of clay,
And the sun-dried clots of earth
Cleave, and the sunset cloaks the grey
Waste and the stony dearth!
O, broad and dusky and sweet,
The sunset covers the weald;
But my dreams are waving with golden wheat
In a still strange field.
My soul, my soul lies bare,
Between the hills and the sea;
Come, ploughman Death, with thy sharp ploughshare,
And plough the field for me.
THE BANNER
Who in the gorgeous vanguard of the years
With wingèd helmet glistens, let him hold
Ere he pluck down this banner, crying "It bears
An old device"; for, though it seem the old,
It is the new! No rent shroud of the past,
But its transfigured spirit that still shines
Triumphantly before the foremost lines,
Even from the first prophesying the last.
And whoso dreams to pluck it down shall stand
Bewildered, while the great host thunders by;
And he shall show the rent shroud in his hand
And "Lo, I lead the van!" he still shall cry;
While leagues away, the spirit-banner shines
Rushing in triumph before the foremost lines.
RANK AND FILE
I
Drum-taps! Drum-taps! Who is it marching,
Marching past in the night? Ah, hark,
Draw your curtains aside and see
Endless ranks of the stars o'er-arching
Endless ranks of an army marching,