Jan. 19th, 2012

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The following poem, written by Alfred Noyes in 1914 or 1915, has, to the best of my knowledge, never been reprinted, anthologized, or quoted, anywhere. So I would like my friends to read it and answer this question: do you think, as I think, that it is a good poem? Purely as a poem, I mean? Do you think it's right or wrong to have completely neglected it? All of you who read would do me a great favour if you commented, individually, as much as you can, because this is part of my research for the book I am writing.

THE REDEMPTION OF EUROPE
...donec templa refeceris.
Under what banner? It was night
Beyond all nights that ever were.
The Cross was broken. Blood-stained might
Moved like a tiger from its lair;
And all that Heaven had died to quell
Awoke, and mingled Earth with Hell.

For Europe, if it held a Creed,
Held it through custom, not through faith.
Chaos returned in dream and deed;
Right was a legend; love - a wraith;
And That from which the world began
Was less than even the best in man.

God in the image of a Snake
Dethroned that dream, too fond, too blind,
The man-shaped God, whose heart could break,
Live, die, and triumph with mankind.
A Super-Snake, a Juggernaut
Dethroned the highest of human thought.

The lists were set. The eternal foe
Within us as without grew strong
By many a super-subtle blow
Blurring the lines of right and wrong
In Art and Thought, till naught seemed true
But that soul-slaughtering cry of new!

New wreckage of the shrines we made
Through centuries of forgotten tears...
We knew not where their scorn had laid
Our Master. Twice a thousand years
Had dulled the uncapricious Sun,
Manifold words obscured the One:

Obscured the reign of Love, our stay,
Our compass through this darkling sea,
The one sure light, the one sure way,
The one firm base of Liberty;
The one firm road that men have trold
Through Chaos to the Throne of God.

Choose ye, a hundred legions cried,
Dishonour or the instant sword!
Ye chose. Ye met that blood-stained tide;
A little kingdom kept its word;
And, dying, cried across the night:
Hear us, o Earth, we chose the Right!

Whose is the victory? Though ye stood
Alone against the unmeasured foe;
By all the tears, by all the blood
That flowed, and has not ceased to flow;
By all the legions that you hurled
Back, through the thunder-shaken world;

By the old who have not where to rest,
By lands laid waste, and hearths defiled;
By every lacerated breast
And every mutilated child;
Whose is the victory? Answer ye
Who, dying, smiled at tyranny:

Under the sky's triumphal arch
The glories of the dawn begin.
Our dead, our shadowy armies march
E'en now, in silence, through Berlin;
Dumb shadows, tattered blood-stained ghosts,
But cast by which swift following hosts
?

And answer, England! At thy side,
Through seas of blood, through mists of tears,
Thou that for Liberty hast died,
And livest, to the end of years
! -
And answer, Earth! Far off, I hear
The paeans of a happier sphere:

The trumpet blown at Marathon
Resounded over earth and sea,
But burning angel lips have blown
The trumpets of thy Liberty:
For who, beside their dead, would deem
The faith, for which they died, a dream?

Earth has not been the same since then.
Europe from thee received a soul,
Whence nations moved in law, like men,
As members of a mightier whole,
Till wars were ended...
On that day,
So shall our children's children say.

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