The Old Grey Squirrel
A great while ago there was a schoolboy
who lived in a cottage by the sea,
And the very first thing he could remember
was the rigging of the schooners by the quay.
He could watch 'em from his bedroom window
with the big cranes a-hauling out the freight,
And he used to dream of shipping as a sea-cook
and a-sailing for the Golden Gate.
He used to buy the yellow penny dreadfuls,
he'd read 'em where he fished for conger eels,
As he listened to the slapping of the water
the green and oily water round the keels,
There were trawlers with their shark-mouthed flatfish
and the nets a-hanging out to dry,
And the skate the skipper kept because he liked 'em
and the landsmen never knew which ones to fry.
There were brigantines with timber out of Norway
just oozing with the syrups of the pine,
There were rusty dusty freighters out of Sunderland
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poem by Alfred Noyes
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The Hills Of Youth
Once, on the far blue hills,
Alone with the pine and the cloud, in those high still places;
Alone with a whisper of ferns and a chuckle of rills,
And the peat-brown pools that mirrored the angels’ faces,
Pools that mirrored the wood-pigeon’s grey-blue feather,
And all my thistledown dreams as they drifted along;
Once, oh, once, on the hills, thro’ the red-bloomed heather
I followed an elfin song.
Once, by the wellsprings of joy,
In the glens of the hart’s-tongue fern, where the brooks came leaping
Over the rocks, like a scrambling bare-foot boy
That never had heard of a world grown old with weeping;
Once, thro’ the golden gorse (do the echoes linger
In Paradise woods, where the foam of the may runs wild?)
I followed the flute of a light-foot elfin singer,
A god with the eyes of a child.
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poem by Alfred Noyes
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The Searchlights
Political morality differs from individual morality, because there is no power above the State. -- General von Bernardi.
Shadow by shadow, stripped for fight,
The lean black cruisers search the sea.
Night-long their level shafts of light
Revolve,and find no enemy.
Only they know each leaping wave
May hide the lightning, and their grave.
And in the land they guard so well
Is there no silent watch to keep?
An age is dying and the bell
Rings midnight on a vaster deep.
But over all its waves, once more
The searchlights move, from shore to shore.
And captains that we thought were dead,
And dreamers that we thought were dumb,
And voices that we thought were fled,
Arise, and call us, and we come;
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poem by Alfred Noyes
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Cap'n Storm-Along
They are buffeting out in the bitter grey weather,
-Blow the man down, bullies, blow the man down!-
Sea-lark
singing to
Golden Feather
,
And burly blue waters all swelling aroun'.
There's
Thunderstone
butting ahead as they wallow,
With death in the mesh of their deep-sea trawl;
There's
Night-hawk
swooping by wild
Sea-swallow,
And old Cap'n Storm-along leading 'em all.
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poem by Alfred Noyes
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A New Madrigal To An Old Melody
(It is supposed that Shadow-of-a-Leaf uses the word 'clear' in a
more ancient sense of 'beautiful.')
As along a dark pine-bough, in slender white mystery
The moon lay to listen, above the thick fern,
In a deep dreaming wood that is older than history
I heard a lad sing, and I stilled me to learn;
So rarely he lilted his long-forgot litany,--
_Fall, April; fall, April, in dew on our dearth!
Bring balm, and bring poppy, bring deep sleepy dittany
For Marian, our clear May, so long laid in earth._
Then I drew back the branches. I saw him that chanted it.
I saw his fool's bauble. I knew his old grief.
I knew that old greenwood and the shadow that haunted it,--
My fool, my lost jester, my _Shadow-of-a-Leaf_!
And 'why,' I said, 'why, all this while, have you left me so
Luckless in melody, lonely in mirth?'
'Oh, why,' he sang, 'why has this world then bereft me so
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poem by Alfred Noyes
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The Man Who Discovered The Use Of A Chair
The man who discovered the use of a chair,
_Odds--bobs--
What a wonderful man!_
He used to sit down on it, tearing his hair,
Till he thought of a highly original plan.
For years he had sat on his chair, like you,
_Quite--still!
But his looks were grim_
For he wished to be famous (as great men do)
And nobody ever would listen to him.
Now he went one night to a dinner of state
_Hear! hear!
In the proud Guildhall!_
And he sat on his chair, and he ate from a plate;
But nobody heard his opinions at all;
There were ten fat aldermen down for a speech
(_Grouse! Grouse!
What a dreary bird!_)
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poem by Alfred Noyes
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Niobe
How like the sky she bends above her child,
One with the great horizon of her pain!
No sob from our low seas where woe runs wild,
No weeping cloud, no momentary rain,
Can mar the heaven-high visage of her grief,
That frozen anguish, proud, majestic, dumb.
She stoops in pity above the labouring earth,
Knowing how fond, how brief
Is all its hope, past, present, and to come,
She stoops in pity, and yearns to assuage its dearth.
Through that fair face the whole dark universe
Speaks, as a thorn-tree speaks thro’ one white flower;
And all those wrenched Promethean souls that curse
The gods, but cannot die before their hour,
Find utterance in her beauty. That fair head
Bows over all earth’s graves. It was her cry
Men heard in Rama when the twisted ways
With children’s blood ran red.
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poem by Alfred Noyes
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Resurrection
Once more I hear the everlasting sea
Breathing beneath the mountain's fragrant
breast,
Come unto Me, come unto Me,
And I will give you rest.
We have destroyed the Temple and in three days
He hath rebuilt it -- all things are made new:
And hark what wild throats pour His praise
Beneath the boundless blue.
We plucked down all His altars, cried aloud
And gashed ourselves for little gods of clay!
Yon floating cloud was but a cloud,
The May no more than May.
We plucked down all His altars, left not one
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poem by Alfred Noyes
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The Loom of Years
In the light of the silent stars that shine on the struggling sea,
In the weary cry of the wind and the whisper of flower and tree,
Under the breath of laughter, deep in the tide of tears,
I hear the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.
The leaves of the winter wither and sink in the forest mould
To colour the flowers of April with purple and white and gold:
Light and scent and music die and are born again
In the heart of a grey-haired woman who wakes in a world of pain.
The hound, the fawn, and the hawk, and the doves that croon and coo,
We are all one woof of the weaving and the one warp threads us through,
One flying cloud on the shuttle that carries our hopes and fears
As it goes thro’ the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.
The green uncrumpling fern and the rustling dewdrenched rose
Pass with our hearts to the Silence where the wings of music close,
Pass and pass to the Timeless that never a moment mars,
Pass and pass to the Darkness that made the suns and stars.
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poem by Alfred Noyes
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A Loom of Years
In the light of the silent stars that shine on the struggling sea,
In the weary cry of the wind and the whisper of flower and tree,
Under the breath of laughter, deep in the tide of tears,
I hear the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.
The leaves of the winter wither and sink in the forest mould
To colour the flowers of April with purple and white and gold:
Light and scent and music die and are born again
In the heart of a grey-haired woman who wakes in a world of pain.
The hound, the fawn, and the hawk, and the doves that croon and coo,
We are all one woof of the weaving and the one warp threads us through,
One flying cloud on the shuttle that carries our hopes and fears
As it goes thro’ the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.
The green uncrumpling fern and the rustling dewdrenched rose
Pass with our hearts to the Silence where the wings of music close,
Pass and pass to the Timeless that never a moment mars,
Pass and pass to the Darkness that made the suns and stars.
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poem by Alfred Noyes
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