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Title: The Sacred Oak
Author: Alfred Noyes [
More Titles by Noyes]
(A Song of Britain)
I
Voice of the summer stars that, long ago,
Sang thro' the old oak-forests of our isle,
Enchanted voice, pure as her falling snow,
Dark as her storms, bright as her sunniest smile,
Taliessin, voice of Britain, the fierce flow
Of fourteen hundred years has whelmed not thee!
Still art thou singing, lavrock of her morn,
Singing to heaven in that first golden glow,
Singing above her mountains and her sea!
Not older yet are grown
Thy four winds in their moan
For Urien. Still thy charlock blooms in the billowing corn.
II
Thy dew is bright upon this beechen spray!
Spring wakes thy harp! I hear--I see--again,
Thy wild steeds foaming thro' the crimson fray,
The raven on the white breast of thy slain,
The tumult of thy chariots, far away,
The weeping in the glens, the lustrous hair
Dishevelled over the stricken eagle's fall,
And in thy Druid groves, at fall of day
One gift that Britain gave her valorous there,
One gift of lordlier pride
Than aught--save to have died--
One spray of the sacred oak, they coveted most of all.
III
I watch thy nested brambles growing green:
O strange, across that misty waste of years,
To glimpse the shadowy thrush that thou hast seen,
To touch, across the ages, touch with tears
The ferns that hide thee with their fairy screen,
Or only hear them rustling in the dawn;
And--as a dreamer waking--in thy words,
For all the golden clouds that drowse between,
To feel the veil of centuries withdrawn,
To feel thy sun re-risen
Unbuild our shadowy prison
And hear on thy fresh boughs the carol of waking birds.
IV
O, happy voice, born in that far, clear time,
Over thy single harp thy simple strain
Attuned all life for Britain to the chime
Of viking oars and the sea's dark refrain,
And thine own beating heart, and the sublime
Measure to which the moons and stars revolve
Untroubled by the storms that, year by year,
In ever-swelling symphonies still climb
To embrace our growing world and to resolve
Discords unknown to thee,
In the infinite harmony
Which still transcends our strife and leaves us darkling here.
* * * * *
V
For, now, one sings of heaven and one of hell,
One soars with hope, one plunges to despair!
This, trembling, doubts if aught be ill or well;
And that cries, "Fair is foul and foul is fair;"
And this cries, "Forward, though I cannot tell
Whither, and all too surely all things die;"
And that sighs, "Rest, then, sleep and take thine ease."
One sings his country and one rings its knell,
One hymns mankind, one dwarfs them with the sky.
O, Britain, let thy soul
Once more command the whole,
Once more command the strings of the world-wide harmony.
VI
For hark! One sings, _The gods, the gods are dead!_
_Man triumphs!_ And hark--_Blind Space his funeral urn._
And hark, one whispers with reverted head
To the old dead gods--_Bring back our heaven, return!_
And hark, one moans--_The ancient order is fled,
We are children of blind chance and vacant dreams.
Heed not mine utterance--that was chance-born, too._
And hark, the answer of Science--_All they said,
Your fathers, in that old time, lit by gleams
Of what their hearts could feel,
The rolling years reveal
As fragments of one law, one covenant, simply true._
VII
_I find_, she cries, _in all this march of time
And space, no gulf, no break, nothing that mars
Its unity. I watch the primal slime
Lift Athens like a flower to greet the stars!
I flash my messages from clime to clime,
I link the increasing world from depth to height!
Not yet ye see the wonder that draws nigh,
When at some sudden contact, some sublime
Touch, as of memory, all this boundless night
Wherein ye grope entombed
Shall, by that touch illumed,
Like one electric City shine from sky to sky._
VIII
_No longer then the memories that ye hold
Dark in your brain shall slumber. Ye shall see
That City whose gates are more than pearl or gold
And all its towers firm as Eternity.
The stones of the earth have cried to it from of old!
Why will ye turn from Him who reigns above
Because your highest words fall short?
Kneel--call
On Him whose Name--I AM--doth still enfold
Past, present, future, memory, hope and love.
No seed falls fruitless there._
Beyond your Father's care--
_The old covenant still holds fast_--no bird, no leaf can fall.
IX
O Time, thou mask of the ever-living Soul,
Thou veil to shield us from that blinding Face,
Thou art wearing thin! We are nearer to the goal
When man no more shall need thy saving grace,
But all the folded years like one great scroll
Shall be unrolled in the omnipresent Now,
And He that saith _I am_ unseal the tomb:
Nearer His thunders and His trumpets roll,
I catch the gleam that lit thy lifted brow,
O singer whose wild eyes
Possess these April skies,
I touch--I clasp thy hands thro' all the clouds of doom.
X
Teach thou our living choirs amid the sound
Of their tempestuous chords once more to hear
That harmony wherewith the whole is crowned,
The singing heavens that sphere by choral sphere
Break open, height o'er height, to the utmost bound
Of passionate thought! O, as this glorious land,
This sacred country shining on the sea,
Grows mightier, let not her clear voice be drowned
In the fierce waves of faction. Let her stand
A beacon to the blind,
A signal to mankind,
A witness to the heavens' profoundest unity.
XI
Her altars are forgotten and her creeds
Dust, and her soul foregoes the lesser Cross.
O, point her to the greater! Her heart bleeds
Still, where men simply feel some vague deep loss.
Their hands grope earthward, knowing not what she needs.
We would not call her back in this great hour!
Nay, upward, onward, to the heights untrod
Signal us, living voices, by those deeds
Of all her deathless heroes, by the Power
That still, still walks her waves,
Still chastens her, still saves,
Signal us, not to the dead, but to the living God.
XII
Signal us with that watchword of the deep,
The watchword that her boldest seamen gave
The winds of the unknown ocean-sea to keep,
When round their oaken walls the midnight wave
Heaved and subsided in gigantic sleep,
And they plunged Westward with her flag unfurled.
Hark, o'er their cloudy sails and glimmering spars,
The watch cries, as they proudly onward sweep,--
_Before the world ... All's well!... Before the world_ ...
From mast to calling mast
The counter-cry goes past--
_Before the world was God!_--it rings against the stars.
XIII
Signal us o'er the little heavens of gold
With that heroic signal Nelson knew
When, thro' the thunder and flame that round him rolled,
He pointed to the dream that still held true.
Cry o'er the warring nations, cry as of old
_A little child shall lead them! they shall be
One people under the shadow of God's wing!
There shall be no more weeping!_ Let it be told
That Britain set one foot upon the sea,
One foot on the earth. Her eyes
Burned thro' the conquered skies,
And, as the angel of God, she bade the whole world sing.
XIV
A dream? Nay, have ye heard or have ye known
That the everlasting God who made the ends
Of all creation wearieth? His worlds groan
Together in travail still. Still He descends
From heaven. The increasing worlds are still His throne
And His creative Calvary and His tomb
Through which He sinks, dies, triumphs with each and all,
And ascends, multitudinous and at one
With all the hosts of His evolving doom,
His vast redeeming strife,
His everlasting life,
His love, beyond which not one bird, one leaf can fall.
XV
And hark, His whispers thro' creation flow,
_Lovest thou me?_ His nations answer "yea!"
And--_Feed My lambs_, His voice as long ago
Steals from that highest heaven, how far away!
And yet again saith--_Lovest thou Me?_ and "O,
Thou knowest we love Thee," passionately we cry:
But, heeding not our tumult, out of the deep
The great grave whisper, pitiful and low,
Breathes--_Feed My sheep_; and yet once more the sky
Thrills with that deep strange plea,
_Lovest thou, lovest thou Me?_
And our lips answer "yea"; but our God--_Feed My sheep._
XVI
O sink not yet beneath the exceeding weight
Of splendour, thou still single-hearted voice
Of Britain. Droop not earthward now to freight
Thy soul with fragments of the song, rejoice
In no faint flights of music that create
Low heavens o'er-arched by skies without a star,
Nor sink in the easier gulfs of shallower pain!
Sing thou in the whole majesty of thy fate,
Teach us thro' joy, thro' grief, thro' peace, thro' war,
With single heart and soul
Still, still to seek the goal,
And thro' our perishing heavens, point us to Heaven again.
XVII
Voice of the summer stars that long ago
Sang thro' the old oak-forests of our isle,
An ocean-music that thou ne'er couldst know
Storms Heaven--O, keep us steadfast all the while;
Not idly swayed by tides that ebb and flow,
But strong to embrace the whole vast symphony
Wherein no note (no bird, no leaf) can fall
Beyond His care, to enfold it all as though
Thy single harp were ours, its unity
In battle like one sword,
And O, its one reward
One spray of the sacred oak, still coveted most of all.
[The end]
Alfred Noyes's poem: Sacred Oak
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