Ghosts Of The New World

"There are no ghosts in America."


There are no ghosts, you say,
    To haunt her blaze of light;
No shadows in her day,
    No phantoms in her night.
Columbus' tattered sail
Has passed beyond our hail.

What? On that magic coast,
    Where Raleigh fought with fate,
Or where that Devon ghost
    Unbarred the Golden Gate,
No dark, strange, ear-ringed men
Beat in from sea again?

No ghosts in Salem town
    With silver buckled shoon?
No lovely witch to drown
    Or burn beneath the moon?
Not even a whiff of tea,
On Boston's glimmering quay.

O, ghostly Spanish walls,
    Where brown Franciscans glide,
Is there no voice that calls
    Across the Great Divide,
To pilgrims on their way
Along the Santa Fe?

Then let your Pullman cars
    Go roaring to the West,
Till, watched by lonelier stars,
    The cactus lifts its crest.
There, on that painted plain,
One ghost will rise again.

Majestic and forlorn,
    Wreck of a dying race,
The Red Man, half in scorn,
    Shall raise his haughty face,
Inscrutable as the sky,
To watch our ghosts go by.

What? Is earth dreaming still?
    Shall not the night disgorge
The ghosts of Bunker Hill
    The ghosts of Valley Forge,
Or, England's mightiest son,
The ghost of Washington?

No ghosts where Lincoln fell?
    No ghosts for seeing eyes?
I know an old cracked bell
    Shall make ten million rise
When one immortal ghost
Calls to the slumbering host.

Alfred Noyes

Alfred Noyes was an English poet, short-story writer, and playwright, best known for his ballads, particularly "The Highwayman" (1906). Born on September 16, 1880, in Wolverhampton, he published his first collection of poems, "The Loom of Years," in 1902. His narrative poetry and works often evoked strong imagery and emotion. Noyes also lectured in various universities across the United States. He passed away on June 25, 1958.

Alfred Noyes

The Lost Battle

Alfred Noyes, Simple Poetry

The Humming Birds

Alfred Noyes, Simple Poetry

The Phantom Fleet

Alfred Noyes, Simple Poetry

Republic And Motherland

Alfred Noyes, Simple Poetry

English

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The Old Meeting House

(New Jersey, 1918)


Its quiet graves were made for peace till Gabriel blows his horn.
    Those wise old elms could hear no cry
    Of all that distant agony--
Only the red-winged blackbird, and the rustle of thick ripe corn.

The blue jay, perched upon that bronze, with bright unweeting eyes,
    Could never read the names that signed
    The noblest charter of mankind;
But all of them were names we knew beneath our English skies.

And on the low gray headstones, with their crumbling weather-stains,
    --Though cardinal birds, like drops of blood,
    Flickered across the haunted wood,--
The names you'd see were names that woke like flowers in English lanes.

John Applegate was fast asleep; and Temperance Olden, too.
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The Garrison Of Cape Ann

From the hills of home forth looking, far beneath the tent-like span
Of the sky, I see the white gleam of the headland of Cape Ann.
Well I know its coves and beaches to the ebb-tide glimmering down,
And the white-walled hamlet children of its ancient fishing town.

Long has passed the summer morning, and its memory waxes old,
When along yon breezy headlands with a pleasant friend I strolled.
Ah! the autumn sun is shining, and the ocean wind blows cool,
And the golden-rod and aster bloom around thy grave, Rantoul!

With the memory of that morning by the summer sea I blend
A wild and wondrous story, by the younger Mather penned,
In that quaint Magnalia Christi, with all strange and marvellous things,
Heaped up huge and undigested, like the chaos Ovid sings.

Dear to ...

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Dead Man's Morrice

There came a crowder to the Mermaid Inn,
    One dark May night,
Fiddling a tune that quelled our motley din,
    With quaint delight,
It haunts me yet, as old lost airs will do,
    A phantom strain:
Look for me once, lest I should look for you,
    And look in vain.

In that old wood, where ghosts of lovers walk,
    At fall of day,
Gleaning such fragments of their ancient talk
    As poor ghosts may,
From leaves that brushed their faces, wet with dew,
    Or tears, or rain,...
Look for me once, lest I should look for you,
    And look in vain.

Have we not seen them--pale forgotten shades
    That do return,
Groping for those dim paths, those fragrant glades,
    Those nooks of fern,
Only to find that, of the may ...

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The Ghosts

There was no wind, and yet the air
    Seemed suddenly astir;
There were no forms, and yet all space
    Seemed thronged with growing hosts.
They came from Where, and from Nowhere,
    Like phantoms as they were;
They came from many a land and place -
    The ghosts, the ghosts, the ghosts.

And some were white, and some were grey,
    And some were red as blood -
Those ghosts of men who met their death
    Upon the field of war.
Against the skies of fading day,
    Like banks of cloud they stood;
And each wraith asked another wraith,
    'What were we fighting for?'

One said, 'I was my mother's all;
    And she was old and blind.'
Another, 'Back on earth, my wife
    And week-old baby lie.'
Another, 'At the bugle's call,
  ...

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A Street Of Ghosts.

The drowsy day, with half-closed eyes,
Dreams in this quaint forgotten street,
That, like some old-world wreckage, lies,
Left by the sea's receding beat,
Far from the city's restless feet.

Abandoned pavements, that the trees'
Huge roots have wrecked, whose flagstones feel
No more the sweep of draperies;
And sunken curbs, whereon no wheel
Grinds, nor the gallant's spur-bound heel.

Old houses, walled with rotting brick,
Thick-creepered, dormered, weather-vaned,
Like withered faces, sad and sick,
Stare from each side, all broken paned,
With battered doors the rain has stained.

And though the day be white with heat,
Their ancient yards are dim and cold;
Where now the toad makes its retreat,
'Mid flower-pots green-caked with mold,
A...

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Republic And Motherland

(1912)

(Written after entering New York Harbor at Daybreak)


Up the vast harbor with the morning sun
    The ship swept in from sea;
Gigantic towers arose, the night was done,
    And--there stood Liberty.

Silent, the great torch lifted in one hand,
    The dawn in her proud eyes,
Silent, for all the shouts that vex her land,
    Silent, hailing the skies;

Hailing that mightier Kingdom of the Blest
    Our seamen sought of old,
The dream that lured the nations through the West,
    The city of sunset gold.

Saxon and Norman in one wedded soul
    Shook out one flag like fire;
But westward, westward, moved the gleaming goal,
    Westward, the vast desire.

Westward and ever westward ran the call,
    ...

Alfred Noyes