A Treasury of Favorite Poems

ALFRED NOYES

The Barrel-Organ

There’s a barrel-organ carolling across a golden street

In the City as the sun sinks low;

And the music’s not immortal; but the world has made it sweet

And fulfilled it with the sunset glow;

And it pulses through the pleasures of the City and the pain

That surround the singing organ like a large eternal light;

And they’ve given it a glory and a part to play again

In the Symphony that rules the day and night.

And now it’s marching onward through the realms of old romance,

And trolling out a fond familiar tune,

And now it’s roaring cannon down to fight the King of France,

And now it’s prattling softly to the moon,

And all around the organ there’s a sea without a shore

Of human joys and wonders and regrets;

To remember and to recompense the music evermore

For what the cold machinery forgets. . . .

Yes; as the music changes,

Like a prismatic glass,

It takes the light and ranges

Through all the moods that pass;

Dissects the common carnival

Of passions and regrets,

And gives the world a glimpse of all

The colours it forgets.

And there La Traviata sighs

Another sadder song;

And there Il Trovatore cries

A tale of deeper wrong;

And bolder knights to battle go

With sword and shield and lance,

Than ever here on earth below

Have whirled into—a dance!—

Go down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac-time, in lilac-time;

Go down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn’t far from London!)

And you shall wander hand in hand with love in summer’s wonderland;

Go down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn’t far from London!)

The cherry-trees are seas of bloom and soft perfume and sweet perfume,

The cherry-trees are seas of bloom (and oh, so near to London!)

And there they say, when dawn is high and all the world’s a blaze of sky

The cuckoo, though he’s very shy, will sing a song for London.

The nightingale is rather rare and yet they say you’ll hear him there

At Kew, at Kew in lilac-time (and oh, so near to London!)

The linnet and the throstle, too, and after dark the long halloo

And golden-eyed tu-whit, tu-whoo of owls that ogle London.

For Noah hardly knew a bird of any kind that isn’t heard

At Kew, at Kew in lilac-time (and oh, so near to London!)

And when the rose begins to pout and all the chestnut spires are out

You’ll hear the rest without a doubt, all chorussing for London:—

Come down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac-time, in lilac-time;

Come down to Kew in lilac-time {it isn’t far from London!)

And you shall wander hand in hand with love in summer’s wonderland;

Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn’t far from London!)

And then the troubadour begins to thrill the golden street,

In the City as the sun sinks low;

And in all the gaudy busses there are scores of weary feet

Marking time, sweet time, with a dull mechanic beat,

And a thousand hearts are plunging to a love they’ll never meet,

Through the meadows of the sunset, through the poppies and the wheat,

In the land where the dead dreams go.

Verdi, Verdi, when you wrote Il Trovatore did you dream

Of the City when the sun sinks low,

Of the organ and the monkey and the many-coloured stream

On the Piccadilly pavement, of the myriad eyes that seem

To be litten for a moment with a wild Italian gleam

As A che la morte parodies the world’s eternal theme

And pulses with the sunset-glow?

There’s a thief, perhaps, that listens with a face of frozen stone

In the City as the sun sinks low;

There’s a portly man of business with a balance of his own,

There’s a clerk and there’s a butcher of a soft reposeful tone,

And they’re all of them returning to the heavens they have known:

They are crammed and jammed in busses and—they’re each of them alone

In the land where the dead dreams go.

There’s a very modish woman and her smile is very bland

In the City as the sun sinks low;

And her hansom jingles onward, but her little jewelled hand

Is clenched a little tighter and she cannot understand

What she wants or why she wanders to that undiscovered land,

For the parties there are not at all the sort of thing she planned,

In the land where the dead dreams go.

There’s an Oxford man that listens and his heart is crying out

In the City as the sun sinks low;

For the barge, the eight, the Isis, and the coach’s whoop and shout,

For the minute-gun, the counting and the long dishevelled rout,

For the howl along the tow-path and a fate that’s still in doubt,

For a roughened oar to handle and a race to think about

In the land where the dead dreams go.

There’s a labourer that listens to the voices of the dead

In the City as the sun sinks low;

And his hand begins to tremble and his face is rather red

As he sees a loafer watching him and—there he turns his head

And stares into the sunset where his April love is fled,

For he hears her softly singing and his lonely soul is led

Through the land where the dead dreams go.

There’s an old and haggard demi-rep, it’s ringing in her ears,

In the City as the sun sinks low;

With the wild and empty sorrow of the love that blights and sears,

Oh, and if she hurries onward, then be sure, be sure she hears,

Hears and bears the bitter burden of the unforgotten years,

And her laugh’s a little harsher and her eyes are brimmed with tears

For the land where the dead dreams go.

There’s a barrel-organ carolling across a golden street

In the City as the sun sinks low;

Though the music’s only Verdi there’s a world to make it sweet

Just as yonder yellow sunset where the earth and heaven meet

Mellows all the sooty City! Hark, a hundred thousand feet

Are marching on to glory through the poppies and the wheat

In the land where the dead dreams go.

So it’s Jeremiah, Jeremiah,

What have you to say

When you meet the garland girls

Tripping on their way?

All around my gala hat

I wear a wreath of roses

(A long and lonely year it is

I’ve waited for the May!)

If any one should ask you,

The reason why I wear it is—

My own love, my true love is coming home to-day.

And it’s buy a bunch of violets for the lady

(It’s lilac-time in London; it’s lilac-time in London!)

Buy a bunch of violets for the lady;

While the sky burns blue above:

On the other side the street you’ll find it shady

(It’s lilac-time in London; it’s lilac-time in London!)

But buy a bunch of violets for the lady,

And tell her she’s your own true love.

There’s a barrel-organ carolling across a golden street

In the City as the sun sinks glittering and slow;

And the music’s not immortal; but the world has made it sweet

And enriched it with the harmonies that make a song complete

In the deeper heavens of music where the night and morning meet,

As it dies into the sunset glow;

And it pulses through the pleasures of the City and the pain

That surround the singing organ like a large eternal light,

And they’ve given it a glory and a part to play again

In the Symphony that rules the day and night.

And there, as the music changes,

The song runs round again;

Once more it turns and ranges

Through all its joy and pain:

Dissects the common carnival

Of passions and regrets;

And the wheeling world remembers all

The wheeling song forgets.

Once more La Traviata sighs

Another sadder song:

Once more Il Trovatore cries

A tale of deeper wrong;

Once more the knights to battle go

With sword and shield and lance

Till once, once more, the shattered foe

Has whirled into—a dance!

Come down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac-time, in lilac-time;

Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn’t far from London!)

And you shall wander hand in hand with Love in summer’s wonderland,

Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn’t far from London!)

The Highwayman

Part One

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,

The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,

And the highwayman came riding—

Riding—riding—

The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

He’d a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,

A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin;

They fitted with never a wrinkle: his boots were up to the thigh!

And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,

His pistol butts a-twinkle,

His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.

III

Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard,

And he tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred;

He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there

But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,

Bess, the landlord’s daughter,

Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked

Where Tim the ostler listened; his face was white and peaked;

His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,

But he loved the landlord’s daughter,

The landlord’s red-lipped daughter,

Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say—

“One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I’m after a prize to-night,

But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;

Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,

Then look for me by moonlight,

Watch for me by moonlight,

I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way.”

He rose upright in the stirrups; he scarce could reach her hand,

But she loosened her hair i’ the casement! His face burnt like a brand

As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;

And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,

(Oh, sweet black waves in the moonlight!)

Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the West.

Part Two

He did not come in the dawning; he did not come at noon;

And out o’ the tawny sunset, before the rise o’ the moon,

When the road was a gipsy’s ribbon, looping the purple moor,

A red-coat troop came marching—

Marching—marching—

King George’s men came marching, up to the old inn-door.

They said no word to the landlord, they drank his ale instead,

But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow bed;

Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!

There was death at every window;

And hell at one dark window;

For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.

III

They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest;

They had bound a musket beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast!

“Now keep good watch!” and they kissed her.

She heard the dead man say—

Look for me by moonlight;

Watch for me by moonlight;

I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!

She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!

She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!

They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years,

Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,

Cold, on the stroke of midnight,

The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!

The tip of one finger touched it; she strove no more for the rest!

Up, she stood up to attention, with the barrel beneath her breast,

She would not risk their hearing: she would not strive again;

For the road lay bare in the moonlight;

Blank and bare in the moonlight;

And the blood of her veins in the moonlight throbbed to her love’s refrain.

Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horse-hoofs ringing clear;

Tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear?

Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,

The highwayman came riding,

Riding, riding!

The red-coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and still!

VII

Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night!

Nearer he came and nearer! Her face was like a light!

Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,

Then her finger moved in the moonlight,

Her musket shattered the moonlight,

Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him—with her death.

VIII

He turned; he spurred to the Westward; he did not know who stood

Bowed, with her head o’er the musket, drenched with her own red blood!

Not till the dawn he heard it, and slowly blanched to hear

How Bess, the landlord’s daughter,

The landlord’s black-eyed daughter,

Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.

Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,

With the white road smoking behind him, and his rapier brandished high!

Blood-red were his spurs i’ the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat;

When they shot him down on the highway,

Down like a dog on the highway,

And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.

* * * * * * *

And still of a winter’s night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,

When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,

When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,

A highwayman comes riding—

Riding—riding—

A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.

Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard;

And he taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred;

He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there

But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,

Bess, the landlord’s daughter,

Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

A Song of Sherwood

Sherwood in the twilight, is Robin Hood awake?

Grey and ghostly shadows are gliding through the brake,

Shadows of the dappled deer, dreaming of the morn.

Dreaming of a shadowy man that winds a shadowy horn.

Robin Hood is here again: all his merry thieves

Hear a ghostly bugle-note shivering through the leaves,

Calling as he used to call, faint and far away,

In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

Merry, merry England has kissed the lips of June:

All the -wings of fairyland were here beneath the moon,

Like a flight of rose-leaves fluttering in a mist

Of opal and ruby and pearl and amethyst.

Merry, merry England is waking as of old,

With eyes of blither hazel and hair of brighter gold:

For Robin Hood is here again beneath the bursting spray

In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

Love is in the greenwood building him a house

Of wild rose and hawthorn and honeysuckle boughs:

Love is in the greenwood, dawn is in the skies.

And Marian is waiting with a glory in her eyes.

Hark! The dazzled laverock climbs the golden steep!

Marian is waiting: is Robin Hood asleep?

Round the fairy grass-rings frolic elf and fay.

In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

Oberon, Oberon, rake away the gold.

Rake away the red leaves, roll away the mould.

Rake away the gold leaves, roll away the red,

And wake Will Scarlett from his leafy forest bed.

Friar Tuck and Little John are riding down together

With quarter-staff and drinking-can and grey goose-feather.

The dead are coming back again, the years are rolled away

In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

Softly over Sherwood the south wind blows.

All the heart of England hid in every rose

Hears across the greenwood the sunny whisper leap,

Sherwood in the red dawn, is Robin Hood asleep?

Hark, the voice of England wakes him as of old

And, shattering the silence with a cry of brighter gold

Bugles in the greenwood echo from the steep,

Sherwood in the red dawn, is Robin Hood asleep?

Where the deer are gliding down the shadowy glen

All across the glades of fern he calls his merry men—

Doublets of the Lincoln green glancing through the May

In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day—

Calls them and they answer: from aisles of oak and ash

Rings the Follow! Follow! and the boughs begin to crash.

The ferns begin to flutter and the flowers begin to fly.

And through the crimson dawning the robber band goes by.

Robin! Robin! Robin! All his merry thieves

Answer as the bugle-note shivers through the leaves,

Calling as he used to call, faint and far away.

In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.