Memories Of The Pacific Coast

I know a land, I, too,
    Where warm keen incense on the sea-wind blows,
And all the winter long the skies are blue,
    And the brown deserts blossom with the rose.

Deserts of all delight,
    Cactus and palm and earth of thirsty gold,
Dark purple blooms round eaves of sun-washed white,
    And that Hesperian fruit men sought of old.

O, to be wandering there,
    Under the palm-trees, on that sunset shore,
Where the waves break in song, and the bright air
    Is crystal clean; and peace is ours, once more.

There Beauty dwells,
    Beauty, re-born in whiteness from the foam;
And Youth returns with all its magic spells,
    And the heart finds its long-forgotten home,--

Home--home! Where is that land?
    For, when I dream it found, the old hungering cry
Aches in the soul, drives me from all I planned,
    And sets my sail to seek another sky.

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

Immortal Sails

Alfred Noyes, Simple Poetry

Five Criticisms - II.

Alfred Noyes, Simple Poetry

The Chimney-Sweeps Of Cheltenham

Alfred Noyes, Simple Poetry

Touchstone On A Bus

Alfred Noyes, Simple Poetry

English

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Peace

Give me the pulse of the tide again
    And the slow lapse of the leaves,
The rustling gold of a field of grain
    And a bird in the nested eaves;

And a fishing-smack in the old harbour
    Where all was happy and young;
And an echo or two of the songs I knew
    When songs could still be sung.

For I would empty my heart of all
    This world's implacable roar,
And I would turn to my home, and fall
    Asleep in my home once more;

And I would forget what the cities say,
    And the folly of all the wise,
And turn to my own true folk this day,
    And the love in their constant eyes.

There is peace, peace, where the sea-birds wheel,
    And peace in the breaking wave;
And I have a broken heart to heal,
    And a broken so...

Alfred Noyes

The Realms Of Gold

(Written after hearing a line of Keats repeated by a passing stranger under the palms of Southern California.)


Under the palms of San Diego
    Where gold-skinned Mexicans loll at ease,
And the red half-moons of their black-pipped melons
    Drop from their hands in the sunset seas,
And an incense, out of the old brown missions,
    Blows through the orange trees;

I wished that a poet who died in Europe
    Had found his way to this rose-red West;
That Keats had walked by the wide Pacific
    And cradled his head on its healing breast,
And made new songs of the sun-burned sea-folk,
    New poems, perhaps his best.

I thought of him, under the ripe pomegranates
    At the desert's edge, where the grape-vines grow,
In a sun-kissed ranch between...

Alfred Noyes

Amalfi

Sweet the memory is to me
Of a land beyond the sea,
Where the waves and mountains meet,
Where, amid her mulberry-trees
Sits Amalfi in the heat,
Bathing ever her white feet
In the tideless summer seas.

In the middle of the town,
From its fountains in the hills,
Tumbling through the narrow gorge,
The Canneto rushes down,
Turns the great wheels of the mills,
Lifts the hammers of the forge.

'T is a stairway, not a street,
That ascends the deep ravine,
Where the torrent leaps between
Rocky walls that almost meet.
Toiling up from stair to stair
Peasant girls their burdens bear;
Sunburnt daughters of the soil,
Stately figures tall and straight,
What inexorable fate
Dooms them to this life of toil?

Lord of vineyards...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Hampton Beach

The sunlight glitters keen and bright,
Where, miles away,
Lies stretching to my dazzled sight
A luminous belt, a misty light,
Beyond the dark pine bluffs and wastes of sandy gray.

The tremulous shadow of the Sea!
Against its ground
Of silvery light, rock, hill, and tree,
Still as a picture, clear and free,
With varying outline mark the coast for miles around.

On, on, we tread with loose-flung rein
Our seaward way,
Through dark-green fields and blossoming grain,
Where the wild brier-rose skirts the lane,
And bends above our heads the flowering locust spray.

Ha! like a kind hand on my brow
Comes this fresh breeze,
Cooling its dull and feverish glow,
While through my being seems to flow
The breath of a new life, the healing of the...

John Greenleaf Whittier

The Beautiful Land Of Nod.

        Come, cuddle your head on my shoulder, dear,
    Your head like the golden-rod,
        And we will go sailing away from here
    To the beautiful Land of Nod.
        Away from life's hurry and flurry and worry,
    Away from earth's shadows and gloom,
        To a world of fair weather we'll float off together,
    Where roses are always in bloom.

        Just shut your eyes and fold your hands,
    Your hands like the leaves of a rose,
        And we will go sailing to those fair lands
    That never an atlas shows.
        On the North and the West they are bounded by rest,
    On the South and the East, by dreams;
        'Tis the country ideal, where nothing is real,
    But everything only seems.

        Just drop down the curtains o...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

From East To West.

The boat cast loose her moorings;
"Good-by" was all we said.
"Good-by, Old World," we said with a smile,
And never looked back as we sped,
A shining wake of foam behind,
To the heart of the sunset red.

Heavily drove our plunging keel
The warring waves between;
Heavily strove we night and day,
Against the west-wind keen,
Bent, like a foe, to bar our path,--
A foe with an awful mien.

Never a token met our eyes
From the dear land far away;
No storm-swept bird, no drifting branch,
To tell us where it lay.
Wearily searched we, hour by hour,
Through the mist and the driving spray,

Till, all in a flashing moment,
The fog-veils rent and flew,
And a blithesome south-wind caught the sails
And whistled the cordage through,
...

Susan Coolidge