Alfred Noyes Poems

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
...

Carol, every violet has
Heaven for a looking-glass!

Every little valley lies
Under many-clouded skies;
...

Now, in a breath, we’ll burst those gates of gold,
And ransack heaven before our moment fails.
Now, in a breath, before we, too, grow old,
...

On this high altar, fringed with ferns
That darken against the sky,
The dawn in lonely beauty burns
...

Give me the pulse of the tide again
And the slow lapse of the leaves,
The rustling gold of a field of grain
And a bird in the nested eaves;
...

O Mystery of life,
That, after all our strife,
Defeats, mistakes,
Just as, at last, we see
...

I
Music of the star-shine shimmering o’er the sea
Mirror me no longer in the dusk of memory:
Dim and white the rose-leaves drift along the shore
...

They are buffeting out in the bitter grey weather,

-Blow the man down, bullies, blow the man down!-
...

It is not over yet-the fight
Where those immortal dreamers failed.
They stormed the citadels of night,
And the night praised them-and prevailed.
...

A great while ago there was a schoolboy
who lived in a cottage by the sea,
And the very first thing he could remember
...