Alfred Noyes Quotes

Oh, grown-ups cannot understand,
And grown-ups never will,
How short the way to fairyland
Across the purple hill.

"He is dead," we cried, and even amid that gloom
The wintry veil was rent! The new-born day
Showed us the Angel seated in the tomb
And the stone rolled away.

"I like youth, and I like the real newness, which always seems to me to be a development out of the old — not a bombshell. But I'm not sure that some of the writers who are claiming those qualities today are as new and young as the elderly critics tell us. I feel surest of my young writers when I don't hear their joints creaking with the strain to be new.
...
"We must remember how badly Keats and Shelley were treated in their day, mustn't we?"

"But the Della Cruscans, who were really bad, were sat upon, too, weren't they?" said Miss Bird. "And, after all, your argument would apply to bosh as well as to beautiful things."

"Victorian, Miss Bird, Victorian," said Basil, wagging a playful finger at her. He had never heard of the Della Cruscan poets, but it was one of his principles never to give himself away in such things. "The conventional mind is the enemy, you know, in this country. I always admire that fellow — what's his name — who dedicated his book in those six words: 'To the British Public, these pearls!' We must think for ourselves. We mustn't be too conventional, you know."

"But — that's exactly — I don't want to think what the fashion of the moment and the newspapers tell me I ought to think. At least, I don't want to do it mechanically. And I don't mean what you think I mean," stammered poor Miss Bird, blushing and puzzled at her inability to penetrate that superior armor with a perfectly sound and pointed weapon. The Helmstone debates had not yet taught her that you cannot argue with an alleged "modern" who is so pleased with himself (and so ancient a type) that he waives your own remarks and hears nothing but his own blood purring in his ears."

Then — in that day — we shall not meet Wrong with new wrong, but right with right; Our faith shall make your faith complete When our battalions re-unite. Forward! — what use in idle words? — Forward, O warriors of the soul! There will be breaking up of swords
When that new morning makes us whole.

Your God still walks in Eden, between the ancient trees, Where Youth and Love go wading through pools of primroses. And this is the sign we bring you, before the darkness fall, That Spring is risen, is risen again, That Life is risen, is risen again, That Love is risen, is risen again, and Love is Lord of all.

He died and He went down to hell! You know not what you mean. Our rafters were of green fir. Also our beds were green. But out of the mouth of a fool, a fool, before the darkness fall, We tell you He is risen again, The Lord of Life is risen again, The boughs put forth their tender buds, and Love is Lord of all!

It mocks me as it flies, I know: All too soon the gleam will go; Yet I love it and shall love My dream that brooks no narrower bars Than bind the darkening heavens above, My Jack o'Lanthorn of the stars: Then, I'll follow it no more, I'll light the lamp: I'll close the door.

Love is in the greenwood, dawn is in the skies, And Marian is waiting with a glory in her eyes.

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.

"At Paske began our morrice And, ere Pentecost, our May; Because, albeit your words be true, You know not what you say. You chatter in church like jackdaws, Words that would wake the dead, Were there one breath of life in you, One drop of blood," he said.

Stand like a beaten anvil, when thy dream
Is laid upon thee, golden from the fire.
Flinch not, though heavily through that furnace-gleam
The black forge-hammers fall on thy desire.

Demoniac giants round thee seem to loom.
'Tis but the world-smiths heaving to and fro.
Stand like a beaten anvil. Take the doom
Their ponderous weapons deal thee, blow on blow.

Needful to truth as dew-fall to the flower
Is this wild wrath and this implacable scorn.
For every pang, new beauty, and new power,
Burning blood-red shall on thy heart be born.

Stand like a beaten anvil. Let earth's wrong
Beat on that iron and ring back in song.

Back to the glass in terror we came, And stared at the writing round the frame. We could not understand one word: And suddenly we thought we heard The hissing of the snakes again: How could we front them all alone? O, madly we clutched at the mirrored stone And wished we were back on the flowery plain: And swifter than thought and swift as fear The whole world flashed, and behold we were there.

There was music all about us, we were growing quite forgetful
We were only singing seamen from the dirt of Londontown.

...if he could only break away from this pseudo-modernity, and pseudo-intellectualism; if he could just once defy his own age, instead of defying the dead Victorians; if he could only shock the vicar (who reads Proust) by quoting Longfellow (one doesn't put him on the mountaintops, of course, but there's better stuff than Proust ever dreamed of in the sonnets on Dante); I should feel that he was really his own self, instead of a variation on a current theme. It seems to me that if you really like a person, you want him above everything to be his own self
...
One does get so sick of the notion of the present moment — that, because its conventions aren't those of the last century, it has no conventions of its own. The conventionalists of today all seem to forget that the conventions of yesterday were equally different from those of the day before yesterday.

Heart of my heart, we cannot die! Love triumphant in flower and tree, Every life that laughs at the sky Tells us nothing can cease to be: One, we are one with the song to-day, One with the clover that scents the world, One with the Unknown, far away, One with the stars, when earth grows old.