Slave And Emperor
'Our cavalry have rescued Nazareth from the enemy whose supermen
described Christianity as a creed for slaves.'
The Emperor mocked at Nazareth
In his almighty hour.
The Slave that bowed himself to death
And walked with slaves in Nazareth,
What were his words but wasted breath
Before that 'will to power'?
Yet, in the darkest hour of all,
When black defeat began,
The Emperor heard the mountains quake,
He felt the graves beneath him shake,
He watched his legions rally and break,
And he whimpered as they ran.
'I hear a shout that moves the earth,
A cry that wakes the dead!
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poem by Alfred Noyes
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The New Duckling
'I want to be new,' said the duckling.
'O, ho!' said the wise old owl,
While the guinea-hen cluttered off chuckling
To tell all the rest of the fowl.
'I should like a more elegant figure,'
That child of a duck went on.
'I should like to grow bigger and bigger,
Until I could swallow a swan.
'I _won't_ be the bond slave of habit,
I _won't_ have these webs on my toes.
I want to run round like a rabbit,
A rabbit as red as a rose.
'I _don't_ want to waddle like mother,
Or quack like my silly old dad.
I want to be utterly other,
And _frightfully_ modern and mad.'
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poem by Alfred Noyes
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Art
I
Yes! Beauty still rebels!
Our dreams like clouds disperse:
She dwells
In agate, marble, verse.
No false constraint be thine!
But, for right walking, choose
The fine,
The strict cothurnus, Muse.
Vainly ye seek to escape
The toil! The yielding phrase
Ye shape
Is clay, not chrysoprase.
And all in vain ye scorn
That seeming ease which ne’er
Was born
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poem by Alfred Noyes
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The Reward Of Song
_Why do we make our music?_
Oh, blind dark strings reply:
Because we dwell in a strange land
And remember a lost sky.
We ask no leaf of the laurel,
We know what fame is worth;
But our songs break out of our winter
As the flowers break out on the earth.
And we dream of the unknown comrade,
In the days when we lie dead,
Who shall open our book in the sunlight,
And read, as ourselves have read,
On a lonely hill, by a firwood,
With whispering seas below,
And murmur a song we made him
Ages and ages ago.
If making his may-time sweeter
With dews of our own dead may,
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poem by Alfred Noyes
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Dedication : To The Memory Of Cecil Spring-Rice
STEADFAST as any soldier of the line
He served his England, with the imminent death
Poised at his heart. Nor could the world divine
The constant peril of each burdened breath.
England, and the honour of England, he still served
Walking the strict path, with the old high pride
Of those invincible knights who never swerved
One hair's breadth from the way until they died.
Quietness he loved, and books, and the grave beauty
Of England's Helicon, whose eternal light
Shines like a lantern on that road of duty,
Discerned by few in this chaotic night;
And his own pen, foretelling his release,
Told us that he foreknew ' the end was peace.'
II.
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poem by Alfred Noyes
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Cotton-Wool
Shun the brush and shun the pen,
Shun the ways of clever men,
When they prove that black is white,
Whey they swear that wrong is right,
When they roast the singing stars
Like chestnuts, in between the bars,
_Children, let a wandering fool
Stuff your ears with cotton-wool._
When you see a clever man
Run as quickly as you can.
You must never, never, never
Think that Socrates was clever.
The cleverest thing I ever knew
Now cracks walnuts at the Zoo.
_Children, let a wandering fool
Stuff your ears with cotton-wool._
Homer could not scintillate.
Milton, too, was merely great.
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poem by Alfred Noyes
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The war Widow
I.
Black-veiled, black-gowned, she rides in bus and train,
With eyes that fill too listlessly for tears.
Her waxen hands clasp and unclasp again.
_Good News_, they cry. She neither sees nor hears.
Good News, perhaps, may crown some far-off king.
Good News may peal the glory of the state--
Good News may cause the courts of heaven to ring.
She sees a hand waved at a garden gate.
For her dull ears are tuned to other themes;
And her dim eyes can never see aright.
She glides--a ghost--through all her April dreams,
To meet his eyes at dawn, his lips at night.
Wraiths of a truth that others never knew;
And yet--for her--the only truth that's true.
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poem by Alfred Noyes
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On The Western Front
I
I found a dreadful acre of the dead,
Marked with the only sign on earth that saves.
The wings of death were hurrying overhead,
The loose earth shook on those unquiet graves;
For the deep gun-pits, with quick stabs of flame,
Made their own thunders of the sunlit air;
Yet, as I read the crosses, name by name,
Rank after rank, it seemed that peace was there;
Sunlight and peace, a peace too deep for thought,
The peace of tides that underlie our strife,
The peace with which the moving heavens are fraught,
The peace that is our everlasting life.
The loose earth shook. The very hills were stirred.
The silence of the dead was all I heard.
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poem by Alfred Noyes
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The Road Through Chaos
I.
There is one road, one only, to the Light:
A narrow way, but Freedom walks therein;
A straight, firm road through Chaos and old Night,
And all these wandering Jack-o-Lents of Sin.
It is the road of Law, where Pilate stays
To hear, at last, the answer to his cry;
And mighty sages, groping through their maze
Of eager questions, hear a child reply.
_Truth? What is Truth?_ Come, look upon my tables.
Begin at your beginnings once again.
_Twice one is two!_ Though all the rest be fables,
Here's one poor glimpse of Truth to keep you sane.
For Truth, at first, is clean accord with fact,
Whether in line or thought, or word, or act.
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poem by Alfred Noyes
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The Ghost Of The New World
'_There are no ghosts in America._'
There are no ghosts, you say,
To haunt her blaze of light;
No shadows in her day,
No phantoms in her night.
Columbus' tattered sail
Has passed beyond our hail.
What? On that magic coast,
Where Raleigh fought with fate,
Or where that Devon ghost
Unbarred the Golden Gate,
No dark, strange, ear-ringed men
Beat in from sea again?
No ghosts in Salem town
With silver buckled shoon?
No lovely witch to drown
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poem by Alfred Noyes
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