Collected Poems: Volume One

by Alfred Noyes

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Dreams; dreams; ah, the memory blinding us,
Blinding our eyes to the way that we go;
Till the new sorrow come, once more reminding us
Blindly of kind hearts, ours long ago:
Mother-mine, whisper we, yours was the love for me!
Still, though our paths lie lone and apart,
Yours is the true love, shining above for me,
Yours are the kind eyes, hurting my heart.

Dreams; dreams; ah, how shall we sing of them,
Dreams that we loved with our head on her breast:
Dreams; dreams; and the cradle-sweet swing of them;
Ay, for her voice was the sound we loved best:
Can we remember at all or, forgetting it,
Can we recall for a moment the gleam
Of our childhood's delight and the wonder begetting it,
Wonder awakened in dreams of a dream?

And once again, from the heart of the City
A murmur of tenderer laughter rose,
A sound that was faint as the smile of Pity,
And sweet as a swan-song's golden close;
And it seemed as if some wonderful Fair
Were charming the night of the City of Dreams,
For, over the mystical din out there,
The clouds were litten with flickering gleams,
And a roseate light like the day's first flush
Quivered and beat on the towers above,
And we heard through the curious crooning hush
An elfin song that we used to love.
Little Boy Blue, come blow up your horn ...
And the soft wind blew it the other way;
So all that we heard was—Cow's in the corn;
But we never heard anything half so gay! And ever we seemed to be drawing nearer
That mystical roseate smoke-wreathed glare,
And the curious music grew louder and clearer,
Till mustard-seed said, "We are lucky, you see,
We've arrived at a time of festivity!"
And so to the end of the street we came,
And turned a corner, and—there we were,
In a place that glowed like the dawn of day,
A crowded clamouring City square
Like the cloudy heart of an opal, aflame
With the lights of a great Dream-Fair:
Thousands of children were gathered there,
Thousands of old men, weary and grey,
And the shouts of the showmen filled the air—
This way! This way! This way!

And See-Saw; Margery Daw; we heard a rollicking shout,
As the swing-boats hurtled over our heads to the tune of the roundabout;
And Little Boy Blue, come blow up your horn, we heard the showmen cry,
And Dickory Dock, I'm as good as a clock, we heard the swings reply.

This way, this way to your Heart's Desire;
Come, cast your burdens down;
And the pauper shall mount his throne in the skies,
And the king be rid of his crown:
And souls that were dead shall be fed with fire
From the fount of their ancient pain,
And your lost love come with the light in her eyes
Back to your heart again.

Ah, here be sure she shall never prove
Less kind than her eyes were bright;
This way, this way to your old lost love,
You shall kiss her lips to-night;
This way for the smile of a dead man's face
And the grip of a brother's hand,
This way to your childhood's heart of grace
And your home in Fairy-land.

Dickory Dock, I'm as good as a clock, d'you hear my swivels chime?
To and fro as I come and go, I keep eternal time.
O, little Bo-peep, if you've lost your sheep and don't know where to find 'em,
Leave 'em alone and they'll come home, and carry their tails behind 'em.

And See-Saw; Margery Daw; there came the chorussing shout,
As the swing-boats answered the roaring tune of the rollicking roundabout;
Dickory, dickory, dickory, dock, d'you hear my swivels chime?
Swing; swing; you're as good as a king if you keep eternal time.

Then we saw that the tunes of the world were one;
And the metre that guided the rhythmic sun
Was at one, like the ebb and the flow of the sea,
With the tunes that we learned at our mother's knee;
The beat of the horse-hoofs that carried us down
To see the fine Lady of Banbury Town;
And so, by the rhymes that we knew, we could tell
Without knowing the others—that all was well.

And then, our brains began to spin;
For it seemed as if that mighty din
Were no less than the cries of the poets and sages
Of all the nations in all the ages;
And, if they could only beat out the whole
Of their music together, the guerdon and goal
Of the world would be reached with one mighty shout,
And the dark dread secret of Time be out;
And nearer, nearer they seemed to climb,
And madder and merrier rose the song,
And the swings and the see-saws marked the time;
For this was the maddest and merriest throng
That ever was met on a holy-day
To dance the dust of the world away;
And madder and merrier, round and round
The whirligigs whirled to the whirling sound, Till it seemed that the mad song burst its bars
And mixed with the song of the whirling stars,
The song that the rhythmic Time-Tides tell
To seraphs in Heaven and devils in Hell;
Ay; Heaven and Hell in accordant chime
With the universal rhythm and rhyme
Were nearing the secret of Space and Time;
The song of that ultimate mystery
Which only the mad blind men who see,
Led by the laugh of a little child,
Can utter; ay, wilder and yet more wild
It maddened, till now—full song—it was out!
It roared from the starry roundabout—

A child was born in Bethlehem, in Bethlehem, in Bethlehem,
A child was born in Bethlehem; ah, hear my fairy fable;
For I have seen the King of Kings, no longer thronged with angel wings,
But crooning like a little babe, and cradled in a stable.

The wise men came to greet him with their gifts of myrrh and frankincense,—
Gold and myrrh and frankincense they brought to make him mirth;
And would you know the way to win to little brother Peterkin,
My childhood's heart shall guide you through the glories of the earth.

A child was born in Bethlehem, in Bethlehem, in Bethlehem;
The wise men came to welcome him: a star stood o'er the gable;
And there they saw the King of Kings, no longer thronged with angel wings,
But crooning like a little babe, and cradled in a stable.

And creeping through the music once again the fairy cry
Came freezing o'er the snowy towers to lead us on to Peterkin:
Once more the fairy bugles blew from lands beyond the sky,
And we all groped out together, dazed and blind, we knew not why; Out through the City's farther gates we went to look for Peterkin;
Out, out into the dark Unknown, and heard the clamour die
Far, far away behind us as we trotted on to Peterkin.

Then once more along the rare
Forest-paths we groped our way:
Here the glow-worm's league-long glare
Turned the Wild Thyme night to day:
There we passed a sort of whale
Sixty feet in length or more,
But we knew it was a snail
Even when we heard it snore.

Often through the glamorous gloom
Almost on the top of us
We beheld a beetle loom
Like a hippopotamus;
Once or twice a spotted toad
Like a mountain wobbled by
With a rolling moon that glowed
Through the skin-fringe of its eye.

Once a caterpillar bowed
Down a leaf of Ygdrasil
Like a sunset-coloured cloud
Sleeping on a quiet hill:
Once we came upon a moth
Fast asleep with outspread wings,
Like a mighty tissued cloth
Woven for the feet of kings.

There above the woods in state
Many a temple dome that glows
Delicately like a great
Rainbow-coloured bubble rose:
Though they were but flowers on earth,
Oh, we dared not enter in;
For in that divine re-birth
Less than awe were more than sin.

Yet their mystic anthems came
Sweetly to our listening ears;
And their burden was the same—
"No more sorrow, no more tears!
Whither Peterkin has gone
You, assuredly, shall go:
When your wanderings are done,
All he knows you, too, shall know!"

So we thought we'd onward roam
Till earth's Smallest Flower appeared,
With a less tremendous dome
Less divinely to be feared:
Then, perchance, if we should dare
Timidly to enter in,
Might some kindly doorkeeper
Give us news of Peterkin.

At last we saw a crimson porch
Far away, like a dull red torch
Burning in the purple gloom;
And a great ocean of perfume
Rolled round us as we drew anear,
And then we strangely seemed to hear
The shadow of a mighty psalm,
A sound as if a golden sea
Of music swung in utter calm
Against the shores of Eternity;
And then we saw the mighty dome
Of some mysterious Temple tower
On high; and knew that we had come,
At last, to that sweet House of Grace
Which wise men find in every place—
The Temple of the Smallest Flower.

And there—alas—our fairy friends
Whispered, "Here our kingdom ends:
You must enter in alone,
But your souls will surely show
Whither Peterkin is gone
And the road that you must go: We, poor fairies, have no souls!
Hark, the warning hare-bell tolls;"
So "Good-bye, good-bye," they said,
"Dear little seekers-for-the-dead."
They vanished; ah, but as they went
We heard their voices softly blent
In some mysterious fairy song
That seemed to make us wise and strong;

For it was like the holy calm
That fills the bosomed rose with balm,
Or blessings that the twilight breathes
Where the honeysuckle wreathes
Between young lovers and the sky
As on banks of flowers they lie;
And with wings of rose and green
Laughing fairies pass unseen,
Singing their sweet lullaby,—
Lulla-lulla-lullaby!
Lulla-lulla-lullaby!
Ah, good-night, with lullaby!

* * * *

Only a flower? Those carven walls,
Those cornices and coronals,
The splendid crimson porch, the thin
Strange sounds of singing from within—
Through the scented arch we stept,
Pushed back the soft petallic door,
And down the velvet aisles we crept;
Was it a Flower—no more?

For one of the voices that we heard,
A child's voice, clear as the voice of a bird,
Was it not?—nay, it could not be!
And a woman's voice that tenderly
Answered him in fond refrain,
And pierced our hearts with sweet sweet pain,
As if dear Mary-mother hung
Above some little child, and sung. Between the waves of that golden sea
The cradle-songs of Eternity;
And, while in her deep smile he basked,
Answered whatsoe'er he asked.

What is there hid in the heart of a rose,
Mother-mine?
Ah, who knows, who knows, who knows?
A man that died on a lonely hill
May tell you, perhaps, but none other will,
Little child.

What does it take to make a rose,
Mother-mine?
The God that died to make it knows
It takes the world's eternal wars,
It takes the moon and all the stars,
It takes the might of heaven and hell
And the everlasting Love as well,
Little child.

But there, in one great shrine apart
Within the Temple's holiest heart,
We came upon a blinding light,
Suddenly, and a burning throne
Of pinnacled glory, wild and white;
We could not see Who reigned thereon;
For, all at once, as a wood-bird sings,
The aisles were full of great white wings
Row above mystic burning row;
And through the splendour and the glow
We saw four angels, great and sweet,
With outspread wings and folded feet,
Come gliding down from a heaven within
The golden heart of Paradise;
And in their hands, with laughing eyes,
Lay little brother Peterkin.

And all around the Temple of the Smallest of the Flowers
The glory of the angels made a star for little Peterkin;
For all the Kings of Splendour and all the Heavenly Powers
Were gathered there together in the fairy forest bowers
With all their globed and radiant wings to make a star for Peterkin,
The star that shone upon the East, a star that still is ours,
Whene'er we hang our stockings up, a star of wings for Peterkin.

Then all, in one great flash, was gone—
A voice cried, "Hush, all's well!"
And we stood dreaming there alone,
In darkness. Who can tell
The mystic quiet that we felt,
As if the woods in worship knelt;
Far off we heard a bell
Tolling strange human folk to prayer
Through fields of sunset-coloured air.

And then a voice, "Why, here they are!"
And—as it seemed—we woke;
The sweet old skies, great star by star
Upon our vision broke;
Field over field of heavenly blue
Rose o'er us; then a voice we knew
Softly and gently spoke—
"See, they are sleeping by the side
Of that dear little one—who died."