The Sussex sailor
O, once, by Cuckmere Haven,
I heard a sailor sing
Of shores beyond the sunset,
And lands of lasting spring,
Of blue lagoons and palm trees
And isles where all was young;
But this was ever the burden
of ev'ry note he sung:
"O, have you seen my true love
A-walking in that land?
Or have you seen her footprints
Upon that shining sand?
Beneath the happy palmtrees,
By Eden whispers fanned...
O, have you seen my true love
A-walking in that land?"
And, once in San Diego,
I heard him sing again,
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poem by Alfred Noyes
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Kilmeny (A Song of the Trawlers)
Dark, dark, lay the drifters, against the red west,
As they shot their long meshes of steel overside;
And the oily green waters were rocking to rest
When Kilmeny went out, at the turn of the tide.
And nobody knew where that lassie would roam,
For the magic that called her was tapping unseen.
It was well nigh a week ere Kilmeny came home,
And nobody knew hwere Kilmeny had been.
She'd a gun at her bow that was Newcastle's best,
And a gun at her stern that was fresh from the Clyde,
And a secret her skipper had never confessed,
Not even at dawn, to his newly wed bride;
And a wireless that whispered above like a gnome,
The laughter of London, the boasts of Berlin.
O, it may have been mermaids that lured her from home,
But nobody knew where Kilmeny had been.
It was dark when Kilmeny came home from her quest,
With her bridge dabbled red where her skipper had died;
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poem by Alfred Noyes
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Republic And Motherland
(Written after entering New York Harbor at Daybreak)
Up the vast harbor with the morning sun
The ship swept in from sea;
Gigantic towers arose, the night was done,
And--there stood Liberty.
Silent, the great torch lifted in one hand,
The dawn in her proud eyes,
Silent, for all the shouts that vex her land,
Silent, hailing the skies;
Hailing that mightier Kingdom of the Blest
Our seamen sought of old,
The dream that lured the nations through the West,
The city of sunset gold.
Saxon and Norman in one wedded soul
Shook out one flag like fire;
But westward, westward, moved the gleaming goal,
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poem by Alfred Noyes
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The Elfin Artist
In a glade of an elfin forest
When Sussex was Eden-new,
I came on an elvish painter
And watched as his picture grew,
A harebell nodded beside him.
He dipt his brush in the dew.
And it might be the wild thyme round him
That shone in the dark strange ring;
But his brushes were bees' antennae,
His knife was a wasp's blue sting;
And his gorgeous exquisite palette
Was a butterfly's fan-shaped wing.
And he mingled its powdery colours,
And painted the lights that pass,
On a delicate cobweb canvas
That gleamed like a magic glass,
And bloomed like a banner of elf-land,
Between two stalks of grass;
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poem by Alfred Noyes
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Fashions
Fashion on fashion on fashion,
(With only the truth growing old!)
And here's the new purple of passion,
(And love waiting out in the cold)
Who'll buy?
They are crying new lamps for Aladdin,
New worlds for the old and the true;
And no one remembers the story
_The magic was not in the new._
They are crying a new rose for Eden,
A rose of green glass. I suppose
The only thing wrong with their rose is
The fact that it isn't a rose.
Who'll buy?
And here is a song without metre;
And, here again, nothing is wrong;
(For nothing on earth could be neater)
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poem by Alfred Noyes
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Dead Man's Morrice
There came a crowder to the Mermaid Inn,
One dark May night,
Fiddling a tune that quelled our motley din,
With quaint delight,
It haunts me yet, as old lost airs will do,
A phantom strain:
_Look for me once, lest I should look for you,
And look in vain._
In that old wood, where ghosts of lovers walk,
At fall of day,
Gleaning such fragments of their ancient talk
As poor ghosts may,
From leaves that brushed their faces, wet with dew,
Or tears, or rain,...
_Look for me once, lest I should look for you,
And look in vain._
Have we not seen them--pale forgotten shades
That do return,
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poem by Alfred Noyes
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The Old Grey Squirrel
A great while ago there was a schoolboy
who lived in a cottage by the sea,
And the very first thing he could remember
was the rigging of the schooners by the quay.
He could watch 'em from his bedroom window
with the big cranes a-hauling out the freight,
And he used to dream of shipping as a sea-cook
and a-sailing for the Golden Gate.
He used to buy the yellow penny dreadfuls,
he'd read 'em where he fished for conger eels,
As he listened to the slapping of the water
the green and oily water round the keels,
There were trawlers with their shark-mouthed flatfish
and the nets a-hanging out to dry,
And the skate the skipper kept because he liked 'em
and the landsmen never knew which ones to fry.
There were brigantines with timber out of Norway
just oozing with the syrups of the pine,
There were rusty dusty freighters out of Sunderland
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poem by Alfred Noyes
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The Hills Of Youth
Once, on the far blue hills,
Alone with the pine and the cloud, in those high still places;
Alone with a whisper of ferns and a chuckle of rills,
And the peat-brown pools that mirrored the angels’ faces,
Pools that mirrored the wood-pigeon’s grey-blue feather,
And all my thistledown dreams as they drifted along;
Once, oh, once, on the hills, thro’ the red-bloomed heather
I followed an elfin song.
Once, by the wellsprings of joy,
In the glens of the hart’s-tongue fern, where the brooks came leaping
Over the rocks, like a scrambling bare-foot boy
That never had heard of a world grown old with weeping;
Once, thro’ the golden gorse (do the echoes linger
In Paradise woods, where the foam of the may runs wild?)
I followed the flute of a light-foot elfin singer,
A god with the eyes of a child.
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poem by Alfred Noyes
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The Searchlights
Political morality differs from individual morality, because there is no power above the State. -- General von Bernardi.
Shadow by shadow, stripped for fight,
The lean black cruisers search the sea.
Night-long their level shafts of light
Revolve,and find no enemy.
Only they know each leaping wave
May hide the lightning, and their grave.
And in the land they guard so well
Is there no silent watch to keep?
An age is dying and the bell
Rings midnight on a vaster deep.
But over all its waves, once more
The searchlights move, from shore to shore.
And captains that we thought were dead,
And dreamers that we thought were dumb,
And voices that we thought were fled,
Arise, and call us, and we come;
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poem by Alfred Noyes
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Cap'n Storm-Along
They are buffeting out in the bitter grey weather,
-Blow the man down, bullies, blow the man down!-
Sea-lark
singing to
Golden Feather
,
And burly blue waters all swelling aroun'.
There's
Thunderstone
butting ahead as they wallow,
With death in the mesh of their deep-sea trawl;
There's
Night-hawk
swooping by wild
Sea-swallow,
And old Cap'n Storm-along leading 'em all.
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poem by Alfred Noyes
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