Giant Hours with Poet Preachers Part 11

MANHOOD AND ITS VIGOR

Virility like unto steel is the very mark of Noyes. But as this study of Childhood has shown, it is a virility touched with tenderness. As Bayard Taylor sings:

"The bravest are the tenderest, The loving are the daring!"

And this is Noyes. Noyes knew Manhood, he sang it, he challenged it too, he crowned it in "Drake"; he placed it a little lower than the G.o.ds. Hear this supreme word, enough to lift man to the skies:

"Where, what a dreamer yet, in spite of all, Is man, that splendid visionary child Who sent his fairy beacon through the dusk!"

Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.

This tribute to Marlow--how eaglelike it is! How suggestive of heights, and mountain peaks and blue skies and far-flung stars!

"But he who dared the thunder-roll, Whose eagle-wings could soar, Buffeting down the clouds of night, To beat against the Light of Light, That great G.o.d-blinded eagle-soul, We shall not see him more!"

Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.

Then he makes us one with all that is granite and flower and high and holy in "The Loom of the Years":

"One with the flower of a day, one with the withered moon, One with the granite mountains that melt into the noon, One with the dream that triumphs beyond the light of the spheres, We come from the Loom of the Weaver, that weaves the Web of the years."

Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.

From "Drake" again this ringing word:

"His face was like a king's face as he spake, For sorrows that strike deep reveal the deep; And through the gateways of a ragged wound Sometimes a G.o.d will drive his chariot wheels From some deep heaven within the hearts of men!"

Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.

CHRISTHOOD AND ITS CALVARY

From childhood to manhood through Christhood to G.o.dhood is a progression that Noyes sees clearly and makes us see as clearly.

Somehow Christ is very real to Noyes. He is not a historical character far off. He is the Christ of here and now; the Christ that meets our every need; as real as a dearly beloved friend next door to us. No poet sees the Christ more clearly.

First he caught the meanings of Christ's gospel of new birth. He was not confused on that. He knows:

"The task is hard to learn While all the songs of Spring return Along the blood and sing.

"Yet hear--from her deep skies, How Art, for all your pain, still cries, _Ye must be born again_!"

Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.

And who could put his wors.h.i.+p more beautifully than the poet does in "The Symbolist"?

"Help me to seek that unknown land!

I kneel before the shrine.

Help me to feel the hidden hand That ever holdeth mine.

"I kneel before the Word, I kneel Before the Cross of flame.

I cry, as through the gloom I steal, The glory of the Name."

Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.

Christ's face, and his life experiences, here and there slip out of the lines of this English poet with an insistence that cannot but win the heart of the world, especially the heart of the Christian. Here and there in the most unexpected places his living presence stands before you, with, to use another of the poet's own lines, "Words that would make the dead arise," as in "Vicisti, Galilee":

"Poor, scornful Lilliputian souls, And are ye still too proud To risk your little aureoles By kneeling with the crowd?

"And while ye scoff, on every side Great hints of Him go by,--Souls that are hourly crucified On some new Calvary!"

"In flower and dust, in chaff and grain, He binds Himself and dies!

We live by His eternal pain, His hourly sacrifice."

"And while ye scoff from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e From sea to moaning sea, 'Eloi, eloi,' goes up once more, 'Lama sabachthani!'

The heavens are like a scroll unfurled, The writing flames above-- This is the King of all the World Upon His Cross of Love!"

Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.

And there in the very midst of "Drake," that poem of a great sea fighter, comes this quatrain unexpectedly, showing the Christ always in the background of the poet's mind. He uses the Christ eagerly as a figure, as a help to his thought. He always puts the Christ and his cross to the fore:

"Whence came the prentice carpenter whose voice Hath shaken kingdoms down, whose menial gibbet Rises triumphant o'er the wreck of Empires And stretches out its arms amongst the Stars?"

Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.

Then in "The Old Skeptic" we hear these of the Christ in the concluding lines:

"I will go back to my home and look at the wayside flowers, And hear from the wayside cabin the kind old hymns again, Where Christ holds out His arms in the quiet evening hours, And the light of the chapel porches broods on the peaceful lane.

"And there I shall hear men praying the deep old foolish prayers, And there I shall see once more, the fond old faith confessed, And the strange old light on their faces who hear as a blind man hears-- 'Come unto me, ye weary, and I will give you rest.'

"I will go back and believe in the deep old foolish tales, And pray the simple prayers that I learned at my mother's knee, Where the Sabbath tolls its peace, through the breathless mountain-vales, And the sunset's evening hymn hallows the listening sea."

Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.

G.o.dHOOD AT LAST AND SURELY

He finds G.o.d. There is no uncertainty about it. From childhood to G.o.dhood has the poet come, and we have come with him. It has been a triumphant journey upward. But we have not been afraid. Even the blinding light of G.o.d's face has not made us tremble. We have learned to know him through this climb upward and upward to his throne.

At first it was uncertain. The poet had to challenge us to one great end in "The Paradox":

"But one thing is needful; and ye shall be true To yourself and the goal and the G.o.d that ye seek; Yea, the day and the night shall requite it to you If ye love one another, if your love be not weak!"