Alfred Noyes Quotes

newspapers, without a purpose, devoted space nowadays to illiterate imbecilities that nobody would have glanced at twice, a generation ago

Your dreamers may dream it The shadow of a dream, Your sages may deem it A bubble on the stream; Yet our kingdom draweth nigher With each dawn and every day, Through the earthquake and the fire "Love will find out the way."

The wind was a torrent of darkness upon the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight looping the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding — Riding — riding — The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn door.

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.

Come and look for Peterkin, poor little Peterkin. No one would believe us if we told them what we know, Or they wouldn't grieve for Peterkin, merry little Peterkin...

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.

Not far, not far into the night, These level swords of light can pierce; Yet for her faith does England fight, Her faith in this our universe; Believing Truth and Justice draw From founts of everlasting law; Therefore a Power above the State, The unconquerable Power returns. The fire, the fire that made her great Once more upon her altar burns. Once more, redeemed and healed and whole, She moves to the Eternal Goal.

Soundlessly, shadow with shadow, we wrestled together,
Till the grey dawn.

Enough of dreams! No longer mock The burdened hearts of men! Not on the cloud, but on the rock Build thou thy faith again; O range no more the realms of air, Stoop to the glen-bound streams; Thy hope was all too like despair: Enough, enough of dreams.

The modern world was not alive to the tremendous Reality that encompassed it. We were surrounded by an immeasurable abyss of darkness and splendor. We built our empires on a pellet of dust revolving around a ball of fire in unfathomable space. Life, that Sphynx, with the human face and the body of a brute, asked us new riddles every hour. Matter itself was dissolving under the scrutiny of Science; and yet, in our daily lives, we were becoming a race of somnambulists, whose very breathing, in train and bus and car, was timed to the movement of the wheels; and the more perfectly, and even alertly, we clicked through our automatic affairs on the surface of things, the more complete was our insensibility to the utterly inscrutable mystery that anything should be in existence at all.

One kiss, my bonny sweetheart; I'm after a prize tonight,
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.

Heart of my heart, we are one with the wind, One with the clouds
that are whirled o'er the lea, One in many, O broken and blind, One as
the waves are at one with the sea! Ay! when life seems scattered apart,
Darkens, ends as a tale that is told, One, we are one, O heart of my
heart, One, still one, while the world grows old.

Memory, out of the mist, in a long slow ripple
Breaks, blindly, against the shore.

High in the old oak pulpit This Lord of all misrule— I think it was Will Summers That once was Shakespeare's fool — Held up his hand for silence, And all the church grew still: "And are you snoring yet," he said, "Or have you slept your fill?

Mystery: Time and Tide shall pass, I am the Wisdom Looking-Glass. This is the Ruby none can touch: Many have loved it overmuch; Its fathomless fires flutter and sigh, Being as images of the flame That shall make earth and heaven the same When the fire of the end reddens the sky, And the world consumes like a burning pall, Till where there is nothing, there is all.