Collected Poems: Volume Two. Alfred Noyes
it as a lamp with her bright wings
Day-long, night-long, young Ariel sits and sings
Echoing the lucid sea,
Listening it echo her own unearthly strain,
Watching through lucid walls the world's rich tide,
One light, one substance with her own, rise and subside.
VII
And over soft brown woods, limpid, serene,
Puffing its fans the Nautilus went its way,
And from a hundred salt and weedy shelves
Peered little hornèd faces of sea-elves:
The prawn darted, half-seen,
Thro' watery sunlight, like a pale green ray,
And all around, from soft green waving bowers,
Creatures like fruit out-crept from fluted shells like flowers.
VIII
And, over all, that glowing mirror spread
The splendour of its heaven-reflecting gleams,
A level wealth of tints, calm as the sky
That broods above our own mortality:
The temporal seas had fled,
And ah, what hopes, what fears, what mystic dreams
Could ruffle it now from any deeper deep?
Content in its own bounds it slept a changeless sleep.
IX
Suddenly, from that heaven beyond belief,
Suddenly, from that world beyond its ken,
Dashing great billows o'er its rosy bars,
Shivering its dreams into a thousand stars,
Flooding each sun-dried reef
With waves of colour, (as once, for mortal men
Bethesda's angel) with blue eyes, wide and wild,
Naked into the pool there stepped a little child.
X
Her red-gold hair against the far green sea
Blew thickly out: her slender golden form
Shone dark against the richly waning West
As with one hand she splashed her glistening breast,
Then waded up to her knee
And frothed the whole pool into a fairy storm! …
So, stooping through our skies, of old, there came
Angels that once could set this world's dark pool a-flame,
XI
From which the seas of faith have ebbed away,
Leaving the lonely shore too bright, too bare,
While mirrored softly in the smooth wet sand
A deeper sunset sees its blooms expand
But all too phantom-fair,
Between the dark brown rocks and sparkling spray
Where the low ripples pleaded, shrank and sighed,
And tossed a moment's rainbow heavenward ere they died.
XII
Stoop, starry souls, incline to this dark coast,
Where all too long, too faithlessly, we dream.
Stoop to the world's dark pool, its crags and scars,
Its yellow sands, its rosy harbour-bars,
And soft green wastes that gleam
But with some glorious drifting god-like ghost
Of cloud, some vaguely passionate crimson stain:
Rend the blue waves of heaven, shatter our sleep again!
THE ISLAND HAWK
(A SONG FOR THE FIRST LAUNCHING OF HIS MAJESTY'S AERIAL NAVY)
I
Chorus— Ships have swept with my conquering name Over the waves of war, Swept thro' the Spaniards' thunder and flame To the splendour of Trafalgar: On the blistered decks of their great renown, In the wind of my storm-beat wings, Hawkins and Hawke went sailing down To the harbour of deep-sea kings! By the storm-beat wings of the hawk, the hawk, Bent beak and pitiless breast, They clove their way thro' the red sea-fray: Who wakens me now to the quest?
II
Hushed are the whimpering winds on the hill,
Dumb is the shrinking plain,
And the songs that enchanted the woods are still
As I shoot to the skies again!
Does the blood grow black on my fierce bent beak,
Does the down still cling to my claw?
Who brightened these eyes for the prey they seek?
Life, I follow thy law!
For I am the hawk, the hawk, the hawk! Who knoweth my pitiless breast? Who watcheth me sway in the wild wind's way? Flee—flee—for I quest, I quest.
III
As I glide and glide with my peering head,
Or swerve at a puff of smoke,
Who watcheth my wings on the wind outspread,
Here—gone—with an instant stroke?
Who toucheth the glory of life I feel
As I buffet this great glad gale,
Spire and spire to the cloud-world, wheel,
Loosen my wings and sail?
For I am the hawk, the island hawk, Who knoweth my pitiless breast? Who watcheth me sway in the sun's bright way? Flee—flee—for I quest, I quest.
IV
Had they given me "Cloud-cuckoo-city" to guard
Between mankind and the sky,
Tho' the dew might shine on an April sward,
Iris had ne'er passed by!
Swift as her beautiful wings might be
From the rosy Olympian hill,
Had Epops entrusted the gates to me
Earth were his kingdom still.
For I am the hawk, the archer, the hawk! Who knoweth my pitiless breast? Who watcheth me sway in the wild wind's way? Flee—flee—for I quest, I quest.
V
My mate in the nest on the high bright tree
Blazing with dawn and dew,
She knoweth the gleam of the world and the glee
As I drop like a bolt from the blue;
She knoweth the fire of the level flight
As I skim, close, close to the ground,
With the long grass lashing my breast and the bright
Dew-drops flashing around.
She watcheth the hawk, the hawk, the hawk, (O, the red-blotched