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THE NEW MORNING

ALFRED NOYES

WORKS OF ALFRED NOYES

Collected Poems—2 Vols.

The Lord of Misrule

A Belgian Christmas Eve

The Wine-press

Walking Shadows—Prose

Tales of the Mermaid Tavern

Sherwood

The Enchanted Island and Other Poems

Drake: an English Epic

Poems

The Flower of Old Japan

The Golden Hynde

The New Morning

THE
NEW MORNING

POEMS

BY

ALFRED NOYES

NEW YORK

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1918, by
Alfred Noyes

Copyright, 1919, by
Frederick A. Stokes Company

All rights reserved, including that of translation
into foreign languages

DEDICATION

[TO THE MEMORY OF
SIR CECIL SPRING-RICE]

I.

STEADFAST as any soldier of the line

He served his England, with the imminent death

Poised at his heart. Nor could the world divine

The constant peril of each burdened breath.

England, and the honour of England, he still served

Walking the strict path, with the old high pride

Of those invincible knights who never swerved

One hair's breadth from the way until they died.

Quietness he loved, and books, and the grave beauty

Of England's Helicon, whose eternal light

Shines like a lantern on that road of duty,

Discerned by few in this chaotic night.

And his own pen, foretelling his release,

Told us that he foreknew "the end was peace."

II.

Soldier of England, he shall live unsleeping

Among his friends, with the old proud flag above;

For even today her honour is in his keeping.

He has joined the hosts that guard her with their love.

They shine like stars, unnumbered happy legions,

In that high realm where all our darkness dies.

He moves, with honour, in those loftier regions,

Above this "world of passion and of lies":

For so he called it, keeping his own pure passion

A silent flame before the true and good;

Not fawning on the throng in this world's fashion

come and see what all might see who would.

Soldier of England, brave and gentle knight,

The soul of Sidney welcomes you tonight.

[CONTENTS]

THE NEW MORNING

["THE AVENUE OF THE ALLIES"]

THIS is the song of the wind as it came

Tossing the flags of the nations to flame:

I am the breath of God. I am His laughter.

I am His Liberty. That is my name.

So it descended, at night, on the city.

So it went lavishing beauty and pity,

Lighting the lordliest street of the world

With half of the banners that earth has unfurled;

Over the lamps that are brighter than stars.

Laughing aloud on its way to the wars,

Proud as America, sweeping along

Death and destruction like notes in a song,

Leaping to battle as man to his mate,

Joyous as God when he moved to create,—

Never was voice of a nation so glorious,

Glad of its cause and afire with its fate!

Never did eagle on mightier pinion

Tower to the height of a brighter dominion,

Kindling the hope of the prophets to flame,

Calling aloud on the deep as it came,

Cleave me a way for an army with banners.

I am His Liberty. That is my name.

Know you the meaning of all they are doing?

Know you the light that their soul is pursuing?

Know you the might of the world they are making,

This nation of nations whose heart is awaking?

What is this mingling of peoples and races?

Look at the wonder and joy in their faces!

Look how the folds of the union are spreading!

Look, for the nations are come to their wedding.

How shall the folk of our tongue be afraid of it?

England was born of it. England was made of it,

Made of this welding of tribes into one,

This marriage of pilgrims that followed the sun!

Briton and Roman and Saxon were drawn

By winds of this Pentecost, out of the dawn,

Westward, to make her one people of many;

But here is a union more mighty than any.

Know you the soul of this deep exultation?

Know you the word that goes forth to this nation?

I am the breath of God. I am His Liberty.

Let there be light over all His creation.

Over this Continent, wholly united,

They that were foemen in Europe are plighted.

Here, in a league that our blindness and pride

Doubted and flouted and mocked and denied,

Dawns the Republic, the laughing, gigantic

Europe, united, beyond the Atlantic.

That is America, speaking one tongue,

Acting her epics before they are sung,

Driving her rails from the palms to the snow,

Through States that are greater than Emperors know,

Forty-eight States that are empires in might,

But ruled by the will of one people tonight,

Nerved as one body, with net-works of steel,

Merging their strength in the one Commonweal,

Brooking no poverty, mocking at Mars,

Building their cities to talk with the stars.

Thriving, increasing by myriads again

Till even in numbers old Europe may wane.

How shall a son of the England they fought

Fail to declare the full pride of his thought,

Stand with the scoffers who, year after year,

Bring the Republic their half-hidden sneer?

Now, as in beauty she stands at our side,

Who shall withhold the full gift of his pride?

Not the great England who knows that her son,

Washington, fought her, and Liberty won.

England, whose names like the stars in their station,

Stand at the foot of that world's Declaration,—

Washington, Livingston, Langdon, she claims them,

It is her right to be proud when she names them,

Proud of that voice in the night as it came,

Tossing the flags of the nations to flame:

I am the breath of God. I am His laughter.

I am His Liberty. That is my name.

Flags, in themselves, are but rags that are dyed.

Flags, in that wind, are like nations enskied.

See, how they grapple the night as it rolls

And trample it under like triumphing souls.

Over the city that never knew sleep,

Look at the riotous folds as they leap.

Thousands of tri-colors, laughing for France,

Ripple and whisper and thunder and dance;

Thousands of flags for Great Britain aflame

Answer their sisters in Liberty's name.

Belgium is burning in pride overhead.

Poland is near, and her sunrise is red.

Under and over, and fluttering between,

Italy burgeons in red, white, and green.

See, how they climb like adventurous flowers,

Over the tops of the terrible towers....

There, in the darkness, the glories are mated.

There, in the darkness, a world is created.

There, in this Pentecost, streaming on high.

There, with a glory of stars in the sky.

There the broad flag of our union and liberty

Rides the proud night-wind and tyrannies die.

[ON THE WESTERN FRONT]

(1916)

I.

I FOUND a dreadful acre of the dead,

Marked with the only sign on earth that saves.

The wings of death were hurrying overhead,

The loose earth shook on those unquiet graves;

For the deep gun-pits, with quick stabs of flame,

Made their own thunders of the sunlit air;

Yet, as I read the crosses, name by name,

Mort pour la France, it seemed that peace was there;

Sunlight and peace, a peace too deep for thought,

The peace of tides that underlie our strife,

The peace with which the moving heavens are fraught,

The peace that is our everlasting life.

The loose earth shook. The very hills were stirred.

The silence of the dead was all I heard.

II.

WE, who lie here, have nothing more to pray.

To all your praises we are deaf and blind.

We may not even know if you betray

Our hope, to make earth better for mankind.

Only our silence, in the night, shall grow

More silent, as the stars grow in the sky;

And, while you deck our graves, you shall not know

How many scornful legions pass you by.

For we have heard you say (when we were living)

That some small dream of good would "cost too much."

But when the foe struck, we have watched you giving,

And seen you move the mountains with one touch.

What can be done, we know. But, have no fear!

If you fail now, we shall not see or hear.

[VICTORY]

(Written after the British Service at Trinity Church, New York)

I.

BEFORE those golden altar-lights we stood,

Each one of us remembering his own dead.

A more than earthly beauty seemed to brood

On that hushed throng, and bless each bending head.

Beautiful on that gold, the deep-sea blue

Of those young seamen, ranked on either side,

Blent with the khaki, while the silence grew

Deep, as for wings—Oh, deep as England's pride.

Beautiful on that gold, two banners rose—

Two flags that told how Freedom's realm was made,

One fair with stars of hope, and one that shows

The glorious cross of England's long crusade;

Two flags, now joined, till that high will be done

Which sent them forth to make the whole world one.

II.

There were no signs of joy that eyes could see.

Our hearts were all three thousand miles away.

There were no trumpets blown for victory.

A million dead were calling us that day.

And eyes grew blind, at times; but grief was deep,

Deeper than any foes or friends have known;

For Oh, my country's lips are locked to keep

Her bitterest loss her own, and all her own.

Only the music told what else was dumb,

The funeral march to which our pulses beat;

For all our dead went by, to a muffled drum

We heard the tread of all those phantom feet.

Yes. There was victory! Deep in every soul.

We heard them marching to their unseen goal.

III.

There, once again, we saw the Cross go by,

The Cross that fell with all those glorious towers,

Burnt black in France or mocked on Calvary,

Till—in one night—the crosses rose like flowers,

Legions of small white crosses, mile on mile,

Pencilled with names that had outfought all pain,

Where every shell-torn acre seems to smile—

Who shall destroy the cross that rose again?

Out of the world's Walpurgis, where hope perished,

Where all the forms of faith in ruin fell,

Where every sign of heaven that earth had cherished

Shrivelled among the lava-floods of hell,

The eternal Cross that conquers might with right

Rose like a star to lead us through the night.

IV.

How shall the world remember? Men forget:

Our dead are all too many even for Fame!

Man's justice kneels to kings, and pays no debt

To those who never courted her acclaim.

Cheat not your heart with promises to pay

For gifts beyond all price so freely given.

Where is the heart so rich that it can say

To those who mourn, "I will restore your heaven"?

But these, with their own hands, laid up their treasure

Where never an emperor can break in and steal,

Treasure for those that loved them past all measure

In those high griefs that earth can never heal,

Proud griefs, that walk on earth, yet gaze above,

Knowing that sorrow is but remembered love.

V.

Love that still holds us with immortal power,

Yet cannot lift us to His realm of light;

Love that still shows us heaven for one brief hour

Only to daunt the heart with that sheer height;

Love that is made of loveliness entire

In form and thought and act; and still must shame us

Because we ever acknowledge and aspire,

And yet let slip the shining hands that claim us.

O, if this Love might cloak with rags His glory,

Laugh, eat and drink, and dwell with suffering men,

Sit with us at our hearth, and hear our story,

This world—we thought—might be transfigured then.

"But Oh," Love answered, with swift human tears,

"All these things have I done, these many years."

VI.

"This day," Love said, "if ye will hear my voice;

I mount and sing with birds in all your skies.

I am the soul that calls you to rejoice.

And every wayside flower is my disguise.

"Look closely. Are the wings too wide for pity?

Look closely. Do these tender hues betray?

How often have I sought my Holy City?

How often have ye turned your hearts away?

"Is there not healing in the beauty I bring you?

Am I not whispering in green leaves and rain,

Singing in all that woods and seas can sing you?

Look, once, on Love, and earth is heaven again.

"O, did your Spring but once a century waken,

The heaven of heavens for this would be forsaken."

VII.

There's but one gift that all our dead desire,

One gift that men can give, and that's a dream,

Unless we, too, can burn with that same fire