The Lord of Misrule, and Other Poems

by Alfred Noyes

THE CRAGS

(In memory of Thomas Bailey Aldrich)

FALERNIAN, first! What other wine Should brim the cup or tint the line That would recall my days Among your creeks and bays; Where, founded on a rock, your house Between the pines’ unfading boughs Watches through sun and rain That lonelier coast of Maine; And the Atlantic’s mounded blue Breaks on your crags the summer through, A long pine’s length below, In rainbow-tossing snow. While on your railed verandah there As on a deck you sail through air, And sea and cloud and sky Go softly streaming by. Like delicate oils at set of sun Smoothing the waves the colours run— Around the enchanted hull, Anchored and beautiful,— Restoring to that sun-dried star You brought from coral isles afar— With shells that mock the moon— The tints of their lagoon; Till, from within, your lamps declare Your harbours by the colours there, An Indian god, a fan Painted in Old Japan. But, best of all, I think at night, The moon that makes a road of light Across the whispering sea, A road—for memory. When the blue dusk has filled the pane, And the great pine-logs burn again, And books are good to read. —For his were books indeed.— Their silken shadows, rustling, dim, May sing no more of Spain for him; No shadows of old France Renew their courtly dance. He walks no more where shadows are But left their ivory gates ajar, That shadows might prolong The dance, the tale, the song. His was no narrow test or rule. He chose the best of every school,— Stendhal and Keats and Donne, Balzac and Stevenson; Wordsworth and Flaubert filled their place. Dumas met Hawthorne face to face. There were both new and old In his good realm of gold. The title-pages bore his name; And, nightly, by the dancing flame, Following him, I found That all was haunted ground; Until a friendlier shadow fell Upon the leaves he loved so well, And I no longer read, But talked with him instead.

THE GHOST OF SHAKESPEARE

1914

CRIMSON was the twilight, under that crab-tree, Where—old tales tell us—all a midsummer’s night, A mad young poacher, drunk with mead of elfin-land, Lodged with the fern-owl, and looked at the stars. There, from the dusk where the dream of Piers Plowman Darkens on the sunset, to this dusk of our own, I read, in a history, the record of our world. The hawk-moth, the currant-moth, the red-striped tiger-moth Shimmered all around me, so white shone those pages; And, in among the blue boughs, the bats flew low. I slumbered, the history slipped from my hand. Then I saw a dead man, dreadful in the moon-dawn, The ghost of the master, bowed upon that book. He muttered as he searched it,—what vast convulsion Mocks my sexton’s curse now, shakes our English clay? Whereupon I told him, and asked him in turn Whether he espied any light in those pages Which painted an epoch later than his own. I am a shadow, he said, and I see none.... I am a shadow, he said, and I see none. Then, O then he murmured to himself (while the moon hung Crimson as a lanthorn of Cathay in that crab-tree), Laughing at his work and the world, as I thought, Yet with some bitterness, yet with some beauty, Mocking his own music, these wraiths of his rhymes: I God, when I turn the leaves of that dark book Wherein our wisest teach us to recall Those glorious flags which in old tempests shook And those proud thrones which held my youth in thrall; When I see clear what seemed to childish eyes The gorgeous colouring of each pictured age; And for their dominant tints now recognise Those prints of innocent blood on every page; O, then I know this world is fast asleep, Bound in Time’s womb, till some far morning break; And, though light grows upon the dreadful deep, We are dungeoned in thick night. We are not awake. The world’s unborn, for all our hopes and schemes; And all its myriads only move in dreams. II Read what our wisest chroniclers record:— A king betrayed both foes and friends to death, Delivered his own country to the sword, And lied, and lied, and lied to his last breath. He died, the martyred anarch of his time. What balm is this that consecrates his dust? The self-same history shudders at the “crime” Which shed a blood so fragrant, so “august.” Yes. Let our sons by thousands, millions, die; And when the crowned assassin of to-day Stands in the Judgment Hall of Liberty What shall your desolate nations rise and say? Honour the dog. He’s vanquished! He’s a king! So—for our dead—he’s too “august” a thing. III It was a crimson twilight, under that crab-tree. Moths beat about me, and bats flew low. I read, in a history, the record of our world. If there be light, said the Master, I am a shadow, and I see none ... I am a shadow, and I see none.

THE WHITE CLIFFS

WODEN made the red cliffs, the red walls of England. Round the South of Devonshire, they burn against the blue. Green is the water there; and, clear as liquid sunlight, Blue-green as mackerel, the bays that Raleigh knew. Thor made the black cliffs, the battlements of England, Climbing to Tintagel where the white gulls wheel. Cold are the caverns there, and sullen as a cannon-mouth, Booming back the grey swell that gleams like steel. Balder made the white cliffs, the white shield of England (Crowned with thyme and violet where Sussex wheatears fly), White as the White Ensign are the bouldered heights of Dover, Beautiful the scutcheon that they bare against the sky. So the world shall sing of them—the white cliffs of England, White, the glory of her sails, the banner of her pride. One and all,—their seamen met and broke the dread Armada. Only white may show the world the shield for which they died.