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Three by Noyes
Poems by Alfred Noyes.
The Song-Tree
Grow, my song, like a tree,
As thou hast ever grown,
Since first, a wondering child,
Long since, I cherished thee.
It was at break of day,
Well I remember it,—
The first note that I heard,
A magical undertone,
Sweeter than any bird
—Or so it seemed to me—
And my tears ran wild.
This tale, this tale is true.
The light was growing gray;
And the rhymes ran so sweet
(For I was only a child)
That I knelt down to pray.
Grow, my song, like a tree.
Since then I have forgot
A thousand dreams, but not
The song that set me free,
So that to thee I gave
My hopes and my despairs,
My boyhood's ecstasy,
My manhood's prayers.
In dreams I have watched thee grow,
A ladder of sweet boughs,
Where angels come and go,
And birds keep house.
In dreams, I have seen thee wave
Over a distant land,
And watched thy roots expand,
And given my life to thee,
As I would give my grave.
Grow, my song, like a tree,
And when I am grown old,
Let me die under thee,
Die to enrich thy mould;
Die at thy roots, and so
Help thee to grow.
Make of this body and blood
Thy sempiternal food.
Then let some little child,
Some friend I shall not see,
When the great dawn is gray,
Some lover I have not known,
In summers far away,
Sit listening under thee.
And in thy rustling hear
That mystical undertone,
Which made my tears run wild,
And made thee, O, how dear.
In the great years to be?
I am proud then? Ah, not so.
I have lived and died for thee.
Be patient. Grow.
Grow, my song, like a tree.
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, whert 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.
Once, he sang to me there,
From a crag on a thyme-clad height where the dew still glistened;
He sang like the spirit of Spring in that dawn-flushed air,
While the angels opened their doors and the whole sky listened:
He sang like the soul of a rainbow, if heaven could hear it,
Beating to heaven, on wings that were April's own;
A song too happy and brave for the heart to bear it,
Had the heart of the hearer known.
Once, ah, once, no more,
The hush and the rapture of youth in those holy places,
The stainless height, the hearts that sing and adore
Till the sky breaks out into flower with the angels' faces!
Once, in the dawn, they were mine; but the noon bereft me.
At midnight now, in an ebb of the loud world's roar,
I catch but a broken stave of the songs that left me
On hills that are mine no more.
Sea-Thrift
Flower of the sea,
Brave thrift, you wake for me,
Fifty years back, one ageless memory,
Whose roots entwine
A childhood where you shine
Clear as to-day against the quivering brine.
Wet with salt spray
Your roseate heads to-day
Beckon me, from a world long past away.
Clear, and more clear
You grow, until I hear
The voice that named you first in childhood's ear.
Wars ebb and flow;
And still your petals glow
Crisp, roseate, clear, as fifty years ago;
Never to fall
Or fade beyond recall,—
A small bright cloud—that clings—to a grey wall.
Collected Poems (1950), pp. 319f, 379f, 391.
P.S. See also "Fern Hill".
Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 10/12/03 04:20:04 PM
Categorized as Literary & Sunday Poetry Series.
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