THE MAY-TREE
The May-tree on the hill
Stands in the night
So fragrant and so still,
So dusky white.
That, stealing from the wood,
In that sweet air,
You'd think Diana stood
Before you there.
If it be so, her bloom
Trembles with bliss.
She waits across the gloom
Her shepherd's kiss.
Touch her. A bird will start
From those pure snows,—
The dark and fluttering heart
Endymion knows.
Alfred Noyes is "among the English poets." His position is secure. But because he has never identified himself with the "new" poetry—either in choice of material or in free verse and polyphonic prose—it would he a mistake to suppose that he is afraid to make metrical experiments. The fact of the matter is, that after he had mastered the technique of conventional rime and rhythm, as shown in many of his lyrical pieces, he began playing new tunes on the old instrument. In The Tramp Transfigured, to which I find myself always returning in a consideration of his work, because it displays some of the highest qualities of pure poetry, there are new metrical effects. The same is true of the Prelude to the Forest of Wild Thyme, and of The Burial of a Queen; there are new metres used in Rank and File and in Mount Ida. The poem Astrid, included in the volume The Lord of Misrule (1915), is an experiment in initial rhymes. Try reading it aloud.
White-armed Astrid,—ah, but she was beautiful!—
Nightly wandered weeping thro' the ferns in the moon,
Slowly, weaving her strange garland in the forest,
Crowned with white violets,
Gowned in green.
Holy was that glen where she glided,
Making her wild garland as Merlin had bidden her,
Breaking off the milk-white horns of the honeysuckle,
Sweetly dripped the new upon her small white
Feet.
The English national poetry of Mr. Noyes worthily expresses the spirit of the British people, and indeed of the Anglo-Saxon race. We are no lovers of war; military ambition or the glory of conquest is not sufficient motive to call either Great Britain or America to arms; but if the gun-drunken Germans really believed that the English and Americans would not fight to save the world from an unspeakable despotism, they made the mistake of their lives. There must be a Cause, there must be an Idea, to draw out the full fighting strength of the Anglo-Saxons. Alfred Noyes made a correct diagnosis and a correct prophecy in 1911, when he published The Sword of England.
She sheds no blood to that vain god of strife
Whom tyrants call "renown";
She knows that only they who reverence life
Can nobly lay it down;
And these will ride from child and home and love,
Through death and hell that day;
But O, her faith, her flag, must burn above,
Her soul must lead the way!