What Grandfather Said

(_An epistle from a narrow-minded old gentleman to a young artist of
superior intellect and intense realism._)

Your thoughts are for the poor and weak?
Ah, no, the picturesque's your passion!
Your tongue is always in your cheek
At poverty that's not in fashion.

You like a ploughman's rugged face,
Or painted eyes in Piccadilly;
But bowler hats are commonplace,
And thread-bare tradesmen simply silly.

The clerk that sings 'God save the King,'
And still believes his Tory paper,--
You hate the anæmic fool? I thought
You loved the weak! Was that all vapour?

Ah, when you sneer, dear democrat,

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poem by Alfred Noyes
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The Island Hawk

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.

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,

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poem by Alfred Noyes
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At Dawn

O Hesper-Phosphor, far away
Shining, the first, the last white star,
Hear’st thou the strange, the ghostly cry,
That moan of an ancient agony
From purple forest to golden sky
Shivering over the breathless bay?
It is not the wind that wakes with the day;
For see, the gulls that wheel and call,
Beyond the tumbling white-topped bar,
Catching the sun-dawn on their wings,
Like snow-flakes or like rose-leaves fall,
Flutter and fall in airy rings;
And drift, like lilies ruffling into blossom
Upon a golden lake’s unwrinkled bosom.

Are not the forest’s deep-lashed fringes wet
With tears? Is not the voice of all regret
Breaking out of the dark earth’s heart?
She too, she too, has loved and lost; and we—

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poem by Alfred Noyes
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The Escape of the Old Grey Squirrel

Old Grey Squirrel might have been
Almost anything -
Might have been a soldier, sailor,
Tinker, tailor
(Never a beggar-man, though, nor thief).
Might have been, perhaps, a king,
Or an Indian chief.

He remained a City clerk
Doubled on a great high stool,
Totting up, from dawn to dark,
Figures, figures, figures, figures,
Red ink, black ink, double rule,
Tot-tot-totting with his pen,
Up and down and round again -
Curious Old Grey Squirrel.

No one ever really knew
What he did at night,
In his room so near the roof,

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poem by Alfred Noyes
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The Admiral's Ghost

I tell you a tale to-night
Which a seaman told to me,
With eyes that gleamed in the lanthorn light
And a voice as low as the sea.

You could almost hear the stars
Twinkling up in the sky,
And the old wind woke and moaned in the spars
And the same old waves went by.

Singing the same old song
As ages and ages ago,
While he froze my blood in that deep-sea night
With the things he seemed to know.

A bare foot pattered on deck;
Ropes creaked; then-all grew still,
And he pointed his finger straight in my face
And growled, as a sea-dog will.

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poem by Alfred Noyes
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The Avenue Of The Allies

This is the song of the wind as it came
Tossing the flags of the nations to flame:

_I am the breath of God. I am His laughter.
I am His Liberty. That is my name._

So it descended, at night, on the city.
So it went lavishing beauty and pity,
Lighting the lordliest street of the world
With half of the banners that earth has unfurled;
Over the lamps that are brighter than stars.
Laughing aloud on its way to the wars,
Proud as America, sweeping along
Death and destruction like notes in a song,
Leaping to battle as man to his mate,
Joyous as God when he moved to create,--
Never was voice of a nation so glorious,
Glad of its cause and afire with its fate!
Never did eagle on mightier pinion
Tower to the height of a brighter dominion,

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poem by Alfred Noyes
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Victory

I.
Before those golden altar-lights we stood,
Each one of us remembering his own dead.
A more than earthly beauty seemed to brood
On that hushed throng, and bless each bending head.

Beautiful on that gold, the deep-sea blue
Of those young seamen, ranked on either side,
Blent with the khaki, while the silence grew
Deep, as for wings--Oh, deep as England's pride.

Beautiful on that gold, two banners rose--
Two flags that told how Freedom's realm was made,
One fair with stars of hope, and one that shows
The glorious cross of England's long crusade;

Two flags, now joined, till that high will be done
Which sent them forth to make the whole world one.

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poem by Alfred Noyes
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The Ballad of Dick Turpin

The daylight moon looked quietly down
Through the gathering dusk on London town

A smock-frocked yokel hobbled along
By Newgate, humming a country song.

Chewing a straw, he stood to stare
At the proclamation posted there:

“Three hundred guineas on Turpins head,
Trap him alive or shoot him dead;
And a hundred more for his mate, Tom King.”

He crouched like a tiger about to spring.
Then he looked up, and he looked down;
And chuckling low, like a country clown,

Dick Turpin painfully hobbled away
In quest of his inn – “The Load of Hay”...

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poem by Alfred Noyes
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The highwayman

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

He'd a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,
A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin.
They fitted with never a wrinkle. His boots were up to the thigh.
And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
His pistol butts a-twinkle,
His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.

Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard.
He tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred.
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

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poem by Alfred Noyes
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The Phantom Fleet

The sunset lingered in the pale green West:
In rosy wastes the low soft evening star
Woke; while the last white sea-mew sought for rest;
And tawny sails came stealing o'er the bar.

But, in the hillside cottage, through the panes
The light streamed like a thin far trumpet-call,
And quickened, as with quivering battle-stains,
The printed ships that decked the parlour wall.

From oaken frames old admirals looked down:
They saw the lonely slumberer at their feet:
They saw the paper, headed _Talk from Town;
Our rusting trident, and our phantom fleet_:

And from a neighbouring tavern surged a song
Of England laughing in the face of war,
With eyes unconquerably proud and strong,
And lips triumphant from her Trafalgar.

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poem by Alfred Noyes
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