Collected Poems: Volume One

by Alfred Noyes

Love, oh love; and they roamed once more
Through a forest of flowers on a fairy shore,
And the sky was a wild bright laugh of wonder
And the West was a dream of the years of yore.

In other worlds I loved you, long ago:
Love that hath no beginning hath no end:
The heather whispers low and sweet and low,
In other worlds I loved you, long ago;
The meadows murmur and the firwoods know
The message that the kindling East shall send;
In other worlds I loved you, long ago:
Love that hath no beginning hath no end.

IX

Out of the deep, my dream, out of the deep,
Yrma, thy voice came to me in my sleep,
And through a rainbow woven of human tears
I saw two lovers wandering down the years;
Two children, first, that roamed a sunset land,
And then two lovers wandering hand in hand,
Forgetful of their childhood's Paradise,
For nine more years had darkened in their eyes,
And heaven itself could hardly find again
Anwyl, the star-child, or the flower, Etain.

For on a day in May, as through the wood
With earth's new passion beating in his blood
He went alone, an empty-hearted youth,
Seeking he knew not what white flower of truth
Or beauty, on all sides he seemed to see
Swift subtle hints of some new harmony,
Yet all unheard, ideal, and incomplete,
A silent song compact of hopes and fears,
A music such as lights the wandering feet
Of Yrma when on earth she reappears.
And he forgot that sad grey City of Pain,
For all earth's old romance returned again,
And as he went, his dreaming soul grew glad
To think that he might meet with Galahad
Or Parsifal in some green glade of fern,
Or see between the boughs a helmet burn
And hear a joyous laugh kindle the sky
As through the wood Sir Launcelot rode by
With face upturned to take the sun like wine.
Ah, was it love that made the whole world shine
Like some great angel's face, blinded with bliss,
While Anwyl dreamed of bold Sir Amadis
And Guinevere's white arms and Iseult's kiss,
And that glad island in a golden sea
Where Arthur lives and reigns eternally?
Surely the heavens were one wide rose-white flame
As down the path to meet him Yrma came;
Ah, was it Yrma, with those radiant eyes,
That came to greet and lead him through the skies,
The skies that gloomed and gleamed so far above
The little wandering prayers of human love?...
He had forgotten all except the gleam
Of light when once he kissed her in a dream, ...
For surely then he knew that long before
Their eyes had met upon some distant shore....
Ah, was it Yrma whose red lips he met
Between the branches, where the leaves were wet?
Etain or Yrma, for it seemed her face
Bent down upon him from some happy place
And whispered to him, low and sweet and low,
In other worlds I loved you, long ago! And he, too, knew his love could never die,
Because his queen was throned beyond the sky.

Yet In sweet mortal eyes he met her now
And kissed Etain beneath the hawthorn bough,
And dared to dream his infinite dream was true
On earth and reign with Etain, dream he knew
Why leaves were green and sides were fresh and blue;
Yea, dream he knew, as children dream they know
They knew all this a million years ago,
And watched the sea-waves wistfully westward wend
And heard a voice whispering in their flow
And calling through the silent sunset-glow
Love that hath no beginning hath no end.

Ah, could they see in the Valley of Gloom
That clove the cliffs behind the City;
Ah, could they hear in the forest of Doom
The peril that neared without pause or pity?
Behind the veils of ivy and vine,
Wild musk-roses and white woodbine,
In glens that were wan as with moonlit tears
And rosy with ghosts of eglantine
And pale as with lilies of long-past years,
Ah, could they see, could they hear, could they know
Behind that beautiful outward show,
Behind the pomp and glory of life
That seething old anarchic strife?
For there in many a dim blue glade
Where the rank red poppies burned,
And if perchance some dreamer strayed
He nevermore returned,
Cold incarnate memories
Of earth's retributory throes,
Deadly desires and agonies
Dark as the worm that never dies,
In the outer night arose,
And waited under those wonderful skies
With Hydra heads and mocking eyes
That winked upon the waning West
From out the gloom of the oak-forest, Till all the wild profound of wood
That o'er the haunted valley slept
Glowed with eyes like pools of blood
As, lusting after a hideous food,
Through the haggard vistas crept
Without a cry, without a hiss,
The serpent broods of the abyss.
Ancestral folds in darkness furled
Since the beginnings of the world.
Ring upon awful ring uprose
That obscure heritage of foes,
The exceeding bitter heritage
Which still a jealous God bestows
From inappellable age to age,
The ghostly worms that softly move
Through every grey old corse of love
And creep across the coffined years
To batten on our blood and tears;
And there were hooded shapes of death
Gaunt and grey, cruel and blind,
Stealing softly as a breath
Through the woods that loured behind
The City; hooded shapes of fear
Slowly, slowly stealing near;
While all the gloom that round them rolled
With intertwisting coils grew cold.
And there with leer and gap-toothed grin
Many a gaunt ancestral Sin
With clutching fingers, white and thin,
Strove to put the boughs aside;
And still before them all would glide
Down the wavering moon-white track
One lissom figure, clad in black;
Who wept at mirth and mocked at pain
And murmured a song of the wind and the rain;
His laugh was wild with a secret grief;
His eyes were deep like woodland pools;
And, once and again, as his face drew near
In a rosy gloaming of eglantere,
All the ghosts that gathered there Bowed together, naming his name:
Lead us, ah thou Shadow of a Leaf,
Child and master of all our shame,
Fool of Doubt and King of Fools.

Now the linnet had ended his evensong,
And the lark dropt down from his last wild ditty
And ruffled his wings and his speckled breast
Blossomwise over his June-sweet nest;
While winging wistfully into the West
As a fallen petal is wafted along
The last white sea-mew sought for rest;
And, over the gleaming heave and swell
Of the swinging seas,
Drowsily breathed the dreaming breeze.
Then, suddenly, out of the Valley of Gloom
That clove the cliffs behind the City,
Out of the silent forest of Doom
That clothed the valley with clouds of fear
Swelled the boom of a distant bell
Once, and the towers of the City of Pain
Echoed it, without hope or pity.
The tale of that tolling who can tell?
That dark old music who shall declare?
Who shall interpret the song of the bell?

Is it nothing to you, all ye that hear,
Sorrowed the bell, Is it nothing to you?
Is it nothing to you? the shore-wind cried,
Is it nothing to you? the cliffs replied.
But the low light laughed and the skies were blue,
And this was only the song of the bell.

X