A Post-Impression

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Title:     A Post-Impression
Author: Alfred Noyes [More Titles by Noyes]

I

He sat with his foolish mouth agape at the golden glare of the sea,

And his wizened and wintry flaxen locks fluttered around his ears,

And his foolish infinite eyes were full of the sky's own glitter and glee,

As he dandled an old Dutch Doll on his knee and sang the song of the spheres.

II

Blue and red and yellow and green they are melting away in the white;

Hey! but the wise old world was wrong and my idiot heart was right;

Yes; and the merry-go-round of the stars rolls to my cracked old tune,

Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon.

III

Then he cradled his doll on his crooning heart and cried as a sea-bird cries;

And the hot sun reeled like a drunken god through the violent violet vault:

And the hillside cottage that danced to the deep debauch of the perfumed skies

Grew palsied and white in the purple heath as a pillar of Dead Sea salt.

IV

There were three gaunt sun-flowers nigh his chair: they were yellow as death and tall;

And they threw their sharp blue shadowy stars on the blind white wizard wall;

And they nodded their heads to the weird old hymn that daunted the light of the noon,

Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon.

V

The little dog laughed and leered with the white of his eye as he sidled away

To stare at the dwarfish hunchback waves that crawled to the foot of the hill,

For his master's infinite mind was wide to the wealth of the night and the day;

The walls were down: it was one with the Deep that only a God can fill.

VI

Then a tiny maiden of ten sweet summers arrived with a song and a smile,

And she swung on the elfin garden-gate and sung to the sea for a while,

And a phantom face went weeping by and a ghost began to croon

Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon.

VII

And she followed a butterfly up to his chair; and the moon-calf caught at her hand

And stared at her wide blue startled eyes and muttered, "My dear, I have been,

In fact, I am there at this moment, I think, in a wonderful fairy-land:"

And he bent and he whispered it low in her ear--"I know why the grass is green.

VIII

"I know why the daisy is white, my dear, I know why the seas are blue;

I know that the world is a dream, my dear, and I know that the dream is true;

I know why the rose and the toad-stool grow, as a curse and a crimson boon,

Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon.

IX

"If I gaze at a rose, do you know, it grows till it overshadows the earth,

Like a wonderful Tree of Knowledge, my dear, the Tree of our evil and good;

But I dare not tell you the terrible vision that gave the toad-stool birth,

The dream of a heart that breaks, my dear, and a Tree that is bitter with blood.

X

"Oh, Love may wander wide as the wind that blows from sea to sea,

But a wooden dream, for me, my dear, and a painted memory;

For the God that has bidden the toad-stool grow has writ in his cosmic rune,

Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon."

XI

Then he stared at the child and he laughed aloud, and she suddenly screamed and fled,

As he dreamed of enticing her out thro' the ferns to a quarry that gapped the hill,

To hurtle her down and grin as her gold hair scattered around her head

Far, far below, like a sunflower disk, so crimson-spattered and still.

XII

"Ah, hush!" he cried; and his dark old eyes were wet with a sacred love

As he kissed the wooden face of his doll and winked at the skies above,

"I know, I know why the toad-stools grow, and the rest of the world will, soon;

Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon."

XIII

"Blue and red and yellow and green they are all mixed up in the white;

Hey! but the wise old world was wrong and my idiot heart was right;

Yes; and the merry-go-round of the stars rolls to my cracked old tune,

Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon. "

[The end]
Alfred Noyes's poem: Post-Impression

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