The Road Through Chaos

I.

There is one road, one only, to the Light:
    A narrow way, but Freedom walks therein;
A straight, firm road through Chaos and old Night,
    And all these wandering Jack-o-Lents of Sin.

It is the road of Law, where Pilate stays
    To hear, at last, the answer to his cry;
And mighty sages, groping through their maze
    Of eager questions, hear a child reply.

Truth? What is Truth? Come, look upon my tables.
    Begin at your beginnings once again.
Twice one is two! Though all the rest be fables,
    Here's one poor glimpse of Truth to keep you sane.

For Truth, at first, is clean accord with fact,
Whether in line or thought, or word, or act.


II.

Then, by those first, those clean, precise, accords,
    Build to the Lord your temples and your song;
The curves of beauty, music's wedded chords
    Resolving into heaven all hate and wrong.

Let harmonies of colour marry and follow
    And breaking waves in a rhythmic dance ensue;
And all your thought fly free as the wings of the swallow,
    Whose arrowy curves obey their measure, too.

Then shall the marching stars and tides befriend you,
    And your own heart, and the world's heart, pulse in rhyme;
Then shall the mob of the passions that would rend you
    Crown you their Captain and march on in time.

So shall you repossess your struggling soul,
Conquer your world, and find the eternal goal.

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.

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The great roads are all grown over
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O Mystery of life,
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Just as the long years give
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Five Criticisms - IV.

(On Certain Realists.)

You with the quick sardonic eye
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Last night I saw a dead man borne along
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A bending staff I would not break,
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I raise the questions, old and dark,
Of Uzdom's tempted patriarch,
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[After reading an article in a leading London journal by an "intellectual" who attacked one of the noblest poets and greatest artists of a former century (or any century) on the ground that his high ethical standards were incompatible with the new lawlessness. This vicious lawlessness the writer described definitely, and he paid his tribute to dishonour as openly and brutally as any of the Bolsheviki could have done. I had always known that this was the real ground of the latter-day onslaught on some of the noblest literature of the past; but I had never seen it openly confessed before. The time has now surely come when, if our civilization is to make any fight at all against the new "red ruin and breaking up of laws," we must cease to belaud our slack-minded, latter-day "literature of rebellion" for its clev...

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