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Title: The Ghost Of Shakespeare
Author: Alfred Noyes [
More Titles by Noyes]
1914
Crimson was the twilight, under that crab-tree,
Where--old tales tell us--all a midsummer's night,
A mad young poacher, drunk with mead of elfin-land,
Lodged with the fern-owl, and looked at the stars.
There, from the dusk where the dream of Piers Plowman
Darkens on the sunset, to this dusk of our own,
I read, in a history, the record of our world.
The hawk-moth, the currant-moth, the red-striped tiger-moth
Shimmered all around me, so white shone those pages;
And, in among the blue boughs, the bats flew low.
I slumbered, the history slipped from my hand.
Then I saw a dead man, dreadful in the moon-dawn,
The ghost of the master, bowed upon that book.
He muttered as he searched it,--what vast convulsion
Mocks my sexton's curse now, shakes our English clay?
Whereupon I told him, and asked him in turn
Whether he espied any light in those pages
Which painted an epoch later than his own.
I am a shadow, he said, and I see none....
I am a shadow, he said, and I see none.
Then, O then he murmured to himself (while the moon hung
Crimson as a lanthorn of Cathay in that crab-tree),
Laughing at his work and the world, as I thought,
Yet with some bitterness, yet with some beauty,
Mocking his own music, these wraiths of his rhymes:
I
God, when I turn the leaves of that dark book
Wherein our wisest teach us to recall
Those glorious flags which in old tempests shook
And those proud thrones which held my youth in thrall;
When I see clear what seemed to childish eyes
The gorgeous colouring of each pictured age;
And for their dominant tints now recognise
Those prints of innocent blood on every page;
O, then I know this world is fast asleep,
Bound in Time's womb, till some far morning break;
And, though light grows upon the dreadful deep,
We are dungeoned in thick night. We are not awake.
The world's unborn, for all our hopes and schemes;
And all its myriads only move in dreams.
II
Read what our wisest chroniclers record:--
A king betrayed both foes and friends to death,
Delivered his own country to the sword,
And lied, and lied, and lied to his last breath.
He died, the martyred anarch of his time.
What balm is this that consecrates his dust?
The self-same history shudders at the "crime"
Which shed a blood so fragrant, so "august."
Yes. Let our sons by thousands, millions, die;
And when the crowned assassin of to-day
Stands in the Judgment Hall of Liberty
What shall your desolate nations rise and say?
Honour the dog. He's vanquished! He's a king!
So--for our dead--he's too "august" a thing.
III
It was a crimson twilight, under that crab-tree.
Moths beat about me, and bats flew low.
I read, in a history, the record of our world.
If there be light, said the Master,
I am a shadow, and I see none....
I am a shadow, and I see none.
[The end]
Alfred Noyes's poem: Ghost Of Shakespeare
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