CHRISTHOOD AND ITS CALVARY
From childhood to manhood through Christhood to Godhood is a progression that Noyes sees clearly and makes us see as clearly. Somehow Christ is very real to Noyes. He is not a historical character far off. He is the Christ of here and now; the Christ that meets our every need; as real as a dearly beloved friend next door to us. No poet sees the Christ more clearly.
First he caught the meanings of Christ's gospel of new birth. He was not confused on that. He knows:
"The task is hard to learn
While all the songs of Spring return
Along the blood and sing.
"Yet hear—from her deep skies,
How Art, for all your pain, still cries,
Ye must be born again!"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
And who could put his worship more beautifully than the poet does in
"The Symbolist"?
"Help me to seek that unknown land!
I kneel before the shrine.
Help me to feel the hidden hand
That ever holdeth mine.
"I kneel before the Word, I kneel
Before the Cross of flame.
I cry, as through the gloom I steal,
The glory of the Name."
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
Christ's face, and his life experiences, here and there slip out of the lines of this English poet with an insistence that cannot but win the heart of the world, especially the heart of the Christian. Here and there in the most unexpected places his living presence stands before you, with, to use another of the poet's own lines, "Words that would make the dead arise," as in "Vicisti, Galilee":
"Poor, scornful Lilliputian souls,
And are ye still too proud
To risk your little aureoles
By kneeling with the crowd?
* * * * *
"And while ye scoff, on every side
Great hints of Him go by,—Souls
that are hourly crucified
On some new Calvary!"
* * * * *
"In flower and dust, in chaff and grain,
He binds Himself and dies!
We live by His eternal pain,
His hourly sacrifice."
* * * * *
"And while ye scoff from shore to shore
From sea to moaning sea,
'Eloi, eloi,' goes up once more,
'Lama sabachthani!'
The heavens are like a scroll unfurled,
The writing flames above—
This is the King of all the World
Upon His Cross of Love!"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
And there in the very midst of "Drake," that poem of a great sea fighter, comes this quatrain unexpectedly, showing the Christ always in the background of the poet's mind. He uses the Christ eagerly as a figure, as a help to his thought. He always puts the Christ and his cross to the fore:
"Whence came the prentice carpenter whose voice
Hath shaken kingdoms down, whose menial gibbet
Rises triumphant o'er the wreck of Empires
And stretches out its arms amongst the Stars?"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
Then in "The Old Skeptic" we hear these of the Christ in the concluding lines:
"I will go back to my home and look at the wayside flowers,
And hear from the wayside cabin the kind old hymns again,
Where Christ holds out His arms in the quiet evening hours,
And the light of the chapel porches broods on the peaceful lane.
"And there I shall hear men praying the deep old foolish prayers,
And there I shall see once more, the fond old faith confessed,
And the strange old light on their faces who hear as a blind
man hears—
'Come unto me, ye weary, and I will give you rest.'
"I will go back and believe in the deep old foolish tales,
And pray the simple prayers that I learned at my mother's knee,
Where the Sabbath tolls its peace, through the breathless
mountain-vales,
And the sunset's evening hymn hallows the listening sea."
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.