In wiser days, my darling rosebud, blown
To beauty proud as was your mother's prime,
In that desired, delayed, incredible time,
You'll ask why I abandoned you, my own,
And the dear heart that was your baby throne,
To dice with death. And oh! they'll give you rhyme
And reason: some will call the thing sublime,
And some decry it in a knowing tone.
So here, while the mad guns curse overhead,
And tired men sigh with mud for couch and floor,
Know that we fools, now with the foolish dead,
Died not for flag, nor King, nor Emperor,--
But for a dream, born in a herdsman's shed,
And for the secret Scripture of the poor.
_Alfred Noyes_
Alfred Noyes was born at Staffordshire, September 16, 1880. He is one
of the few contemporary poets who have been fortunate enough to write
a kind of poetry that is not only saleable but popular with many
classes of people.
His first book, _The Loom of Years_ (1902), was published when he was
only 22 years old, and _Poems_ (1904) intensified the promise of his
first publication. Swinburne, grown old and living in retirement, was
so struck with Noyes's talent that he had the young poet out to read
to him. Unfortunately, Noyes has not developed his gifts as deeply as
his admirers have hoped. His poetry, extremely straightforward and
rhythmical, has often degenerated into cheap sentimentalities and
cheaper tirades; it has frequently attempted to express programs and
profundities far beyond Noyes's power.
What is most appealing about his best verse is its ease and
heartiness; this singer's gift lies in the almost personal bond
established between the poet and his public. People have such a good
time reading his vivacious lines because Noyes had such a good time
writing them. Rhyme in a thumping rhythm seems to be not merely his
trade but his morning exercise. Noyes's own relish filled and
quickened glees and catches like _Forty Singing Seamen_ (1907), the
lusty choruses in _Tales of the Mermaid Tavern_ (1913), and the
genuinely inspired nonsense of the earlier _Forest of Wild Thyme_
(1905).
The least popular work of Noyes is, as a unified product, his most
remarkable performance. It is an epic in twelve books of blank verse,
_Drake_ (1908), a glowing pageant of the sea and England's drama upon
it. It is a spirited echo of the maritime Elizabethans; a vivid and
orchestral work interspersed with splendid lyric passages and brisk
songs. The companion volume, an attempted reconstruction of the
literary phase of the same period, is less successful; but these
_Tales of the Mermaid Tavern_ (which introduce Shakespeare, Marlowe,
Drayton, Raleigh, Ben Jonson, and other immortals) are alive and
colorful, if somewhat too insistently rollicking and smoothly lilting.
His eight volumes were assembled in 1913 and published in two books of
_Collected Poems_ (Frederick A. Stokes Company).