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Alfred Noyes citations
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Alfred Noyes, né à Wolverhampton le 16 septembre 1880 et mort à l'Île de Wight le 25 juin 1958, est un poète anglais, connu surtout pour ses ballades The Highwayman et The Barrel Organ .

Il est le fils d'Alfred et Amélia Adams Noyes. Il fait ses études à Oxford, au Collège d'Exeter, qu'il quitte avant d'obtenir un diplôme. À 21 ans, il publie son premier recueil de poèmes, The Loom of the Years. De 1903 à 1908, Noyes publie cinq volumes de poésies, parmi lesquels The Forest of Wild Thyme et The Flower of Old Japan and Other Poems .

En 1907, il épouse Garnett Daniels. De 1914 à 1923, il enseigne la littérature anglaise à l'université de Princeton où l'un de ses élèves est F. Scott Fitzgerald. L'épouse de Noyes meurt en 1926, ce qui l'amène à se convertir au catholicisme. Il raconte sa conversion dans The Unknown God , paru en 1934. Il se remarie avec Angela Mayne Weld-Blundell, dont il a trois enfants : Hugh, Veronica et Margaret.

Une cécité naissante l'oblige à dicter ses compositions. Son autobiographie, Two Worlds for Memory, est publiée en 1953. Noyes est l'auteur d'une soixantaine de livres, non seulement de poésie mais aussi de nouvelles. Les poésies de Noyes exaltent le patriotisme et les héros de la guerre. Elles reflètent son admiration pour la nature, son respect pour les explorateurs du monde scientifique et sa foi en Dieu. Wikipedia  

✵ 16. septembre 1880 – 28. juin 1958
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Alfred Noyes: 59   citations 0   J'aime

Alfred Noyes: Citations en anglais

“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.”

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Alfred Noyes

Part III : The Mystic Ruby
The Flower of Old Japan and Other Poems (1907), The Flower of Old Japan

“"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.”

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Alfred Noyes

Resurrection
Collected Poems (1913)

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

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Alfred Noyes

"The Shadow" in The Empire Review (1923) Vol. 37, p. 620

“But just as the world grew right again,
We heard a wanderer out on the plain
Singing what none of us understood;
Yet we thought that the world grew thrice more sweet
And the meadows were blossoming under his feet.
And we felt a grand and beautiful fear,
For we knew that a marvellous thought drew near;
So we kept the glass for a little while:
And the skies grew deeper and twice as bright,
And the seas grew soft as a flower of light,
And the meadows rippled from stile to stile;
And memories danced in a musical throng
Thro' the blossom that scented the wonderful song.”

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Alfred Noyes

Part III : The Mystic Ruby
The Flower of Old Japan and Other Poems (1907), The Flower of Old Japan

“We plucked down all His altars, left not one
Save where, perchance (and ah, the joy was fleet),
We laid our garlands in the sun
At the white Sea-born's feet.”

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Alfred Noyes

Resurrection
Collected Poems (1913)

“A shadow leaned over me, whispering, in the darkness,
Thoughts without sound;
Sorrowful thoughts that filled me with helpless wonder
And held me bound.”

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Alfred Noyes

"The Shadow" in The Empire Review (1923) Vol. 37, p. 620

“The Flower of Old Japan.
The Flower above all other flowers,
The Flower that never dies;
Before whose throne the scented hours
Offer their sacrifice;
The Flower that here on earth below
Reveals the heavenly plan;
But only little children know
The Flower of Old Japan.”

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Alfred Noyes

Song
The Flower of Old Japan and Other Poems (1907), The Flower of Old Japan

“He was once our trumpeter, now his bugle's dumb,
Pile your arms beneath it, for the owlet light is come,
We'll wander through the roses where we marched of old with Peterkin,
We'll search the summer sunset where the Hybla beehives hum,
And — if we meet a fairy there — we'll ask for news of Peterkin.”

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Alfred Noyes

The Flower of Old Japan and Other Poems (1907), Forest of Wild Thyme

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

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Alfred Noyes

"Seagulls on the Serpentine"
Songs of Shadow-of-a-leaf and other poems (1924)

“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.”

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Alfred Noyes livre The Highwayman

The Highwayman (1907)

“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…”

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Alfred Noyes

Prelude
The Flower of Old Japan and Other Poems (1907), Forest of Wild Thyme

“Beauty is a fading flower,
Truth is but a wizard's tower,
Where a solemn death-bell tolls,
And a forest round it rolls.”

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Alfred Noyes

Epilogue
The Flower of Old Japan and Other Poems (1907), The Flower of Old Japan

“Ye that follow the vision
Of the world's weal afar,
Have ye met with derision
And the red laugh of war;
Yet the thunder shall not hurt you,
Nor the battle-storms dismay;
Tho' the sun in heaven desert you,
"Love will find out the way."”

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Alfred Noyes

Song, Book VIII, p. 146
Drake, an English Epic (1908)

“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.”

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Alfred Noyes livre The Highwayman

The Highwayman (1907)

“Dawn, ever bearing some divine increase
Of beauty, love, and wisdom round the world,
Dawn, like a wild-rose in the fields of heaven
Washed grey with dew, awoke, and found the barque
At anchor in a little land-locked bay.”

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Alfred Noyes

Book VIII, p. 148
Drake, an English Epic (1908)

“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."”

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Alfred Noyes

Song, Book VIII, p. 146
Drake, an English Epic (1908)

“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!”

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Alfred Noyes

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.
Forward
The Lord of Misrule and Other Poems (1915)

“A thousand creeds and battle-cries,
A thousand warring social schemes,
A thousand new moralities,
And twenty thousand thousand dreams!

Each on his own anarchic way,
From the old order breaking free, —
Our ruined world desires, you say,
License, once more, not Liberty.”

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Alfred Noyes

Forward
The Lord of Misrule and Other Poems (1915)

“And captains that we thought were dead,
And dreamers that we thought were dumb,
And voices that we thought were fled,
Arise, and call us, and we come;
And "search in thine own soul," they cry;
"For there, too, lurks thine enemy."”

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Alfred Noyes

Search for the foe in thine own soul,
The sloth, the intellectual pride;
The trivial jest that veils the goal
For which our fathers lived and died;
The lawless dreams, the cynic Art,
That rend thy nobler self apart.
The Search-Lights
The Lord of Misrule and Other Poems (1915)

“He bowed his head. He stood so still,
They bowed their heads as well.
And softly from the organ-loft
The song began to swell.

Come up with blood-red streamers,
The reeds began the strain.
The vox humana pealed on high,
The Spring is risen again!”

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Alfred Noyes

The Lord of Misrule
The Lord of Misrule and Other Poems (1915)

“Come up, with white and crimson!
O, shake your bells and sing;
Let the porch bend, the pillars bow,
Before our Lord, the Spring!”

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Alfred Noyes

The Lord of Misrule
The Lord of Misrule and Other Poems (1915)

“Thou whose deep ways are in the sea,
Whose footsteps are not known,
To-night a world that turned from Thee
Is waiting — at Thy Throne.The towering Babels that we raised
Where scoffing sophists brawl,
The little Antichrists we praised —
The night is on them all.”

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Alfred Noyes

Dedication, later published as " A Prayer in Time of War http://www.poetseers.org/poets/alfred_noyes/a_prayer_in_time_of_war/"
A Belgian Christmas Eve (1915)

“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.”

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Alfred Noyes

Unity, § II
The Golden Hynde and Other Poems (1914)

“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.”

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Alfred Noyes

Apologia
The Flower of Old Japan and Other Poems (1907), Forest of Wild Thyme

“Critics, you have been so kind,
I would not have you think me blind
To all the wisdom that you preach;
Yet before I strictlier run
In straiter lines of chiselled speech,
Give me one more hour, just one
Hour to hunt the fairy gleam
That flutters through this childish dream.”

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Alfred Noyes

Apologia
The Flower of Old Japan and Other Poems (1907), Forest of Wild Thyme

“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.”

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Alfred Noyes

The Barrel Organ
Poems (1906)

“Descend, descend, Urania, speak
To men in their own tongue!
Leave not the breaking heart to break
Because thine own is strong.
This is the law, in dream and deed,
That heaven must walk on earth!
O, shine upon the humble creed
That holds the heavenly birth.”

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Alfred Noyes

"The Secret Inn : 'The Kingdom is Within You'" in Master Mind Magazine, Vol. VII, No. 3 (December 1914), p. 99

“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.”

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Alfred Noyes

"The Secret Inn : 'The Kingdom is Within You'" in Master Mind Magazine, Vol. VII, No. 3 (December 1914), p. 99

“The fool hath said … The fool hath said
And we, who deemed him wise,
We, who believed that Thou wast dead,
How should we seek Thine eyes?How should we seek to Thee for power,
Who scorned Thee yesterday?
How should we kneel in this dread hour?
Lord, teach us how to pray.”

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Alfred Noyes

Dedication, later published as "A Prayer in Time of War"
A Belgian Christmas Eve (1915)

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