Collected Poems: Volume Two

by Alfred Noyes

Red Rose Lane
Echoed with laughter as, with amber eyes
Blinking, the grey cat in a seaman's arms
Went to the wharf. 'Ay, but we need a cat,'
The captain said. So, when the painted ship
Sailed through a golden sunrise down the Thames,
A grey tail waved upon the misty poop,
And Whittington had his venture on the seas.

It was a nine days' jest, and soon forgot.
But, all that year,—ah, sirs, ye know the world,
For all the foolish boasting of the proud,
Looks not beneath the coat of Taunton serge
For Gules and Azure. A prince that comes in rags
To clean your shoes and, out of his own pride,
Waits for the world to paint his shield again
Must wait for ever and a day.
The world
Is a great hypocrite, hypocrite most of all
When thus it boasts its purple pride of race,
Then with eyes blind to all but pride of place
Tramples the scullion's heraldry underfoot,
Nay, never sees it, never dreams of it,
Content to know that, here and now, his coat
Is greasy....
So did Whittington find at last
Such nearness was most distant; that to see her,
Talk with her, serve her thus, was but to lose
True sight, true hearing. He must save his life
By losing it; forsake, to win, his love;
Go out into the world to bring her home.
It was but labour lost to clean the shoes,
And turn the jack, and scour the dripping-pan.
For every scolding blown about her ears
The cook's great ladle fell upon the head
Of Whittington; who, beneath her rule, became
The scullery's general scapegoat. It was he
That burned the pie-crust, drank the hippocras,
Dinted the silver beaker....
Many a month
He chafed, till his resolve took sudden shape And, out of the dark house at the peep of day,
Shouldering bundle and stick again, he stole
To seek his freedom, and to shake the dust
Of London from his shoes....
You know the stone
On Highgate, where he sate awhile to rest,
With aching heart, and thought 'I shall not see
Her face again.' There, as the coloured dawn
Over the sleeping City slowly bloomed,
A small black battered ship with tattered sails
Blurring the burnished glamour of the Thames
Crept, side-long to a wharf.
Then, all at once,
The London bells rang out a welcome home;
And, over them all, tossing the tenor on high,
The Bell of Bow, a sun among the stars,
Flooded the morning air with this refrain:—

'Turn again, Whittington! Turn again, Whittington!
Flos Mercatorum, thy ship hath come home!
Trailing from her cross-trees the crimson of the sunrise,
Dragging all the glory of the sunset thro' the foam.
Turn again, Whittington,
Turn again, Whittington,
Lord Mayor of London!

Turn again, Whittington! When thy hope was darkest,
Far beyond the sky-line a ship sailed for thee.
Flos Mercatorum, O, when thy faith was blindest,
Even then thy sails were set beyond the Ocean-sea.'

So he heard and heeded us, and turned again to London,
Stick and bundle on his back, he turned to Red Rose Lane,
Hardly hearing as he went the chatter of the prentices,—
What d'ye lack, and what d'ye lack, and what d'ye lack again?

Back into the scullery, before the cook had missed him,
Early in the morning his labours he began:
Once again to clean the shoes and clatter with the water-pail,
Once again to scrub the jack and scour the dripping-pan.

All the bells of London were pealing as he laboured.
Wildly beat his heart, and his blood began to race.
Then—there came a light step and, suddenly, beside him
Stood his lady Alice, with a light upon her face.

'Quick,' she said, 'O, quick,' she said, 'they want you, Richard Whittington!'
'Quick,' she said; and, while she spoke, her lighted eyes betrayed
All that she had hidden long, and all she still would hide from him.
So—he turned and followed her, his green-gowned maid.

* * * *

There, in a broad dark oaken-panelled room
Rich with black carvings and great gleaming cups
Of silver, sirs, and massy halpace built
Half over Red Rose Lane, Fitzwarren sat;
And, at his side, O, like an old romance
That suddenly comes true and fills the world
With April colours, two bronzed seamen stood,
Tattered and scarred, and stained with sun and brine.
'Flos Mercatorum,' Hugh Fitzwarren cried,
Holding both hands out to the pale-faced boy,
'The prentice wins the prize! Why, Whittington,
Thy cat hath caught the biggest mouse of all!'
And, on to the table, tilting a heavy sack,
One of the seamen poured a glittering stream
Of rubies, emeralds, opals, amethysts,
That turned the room to an Aladdin's cave,
Or magic goblet brimmed with dusky wine
Where clustering rainbow-coloured bubbles clung
And sparkled, in the halls of Prester John.