A wholly unknown poem

[fpb]

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.

Comments

[thefish30.livejournal.com]

I like it enough to be printing it out to tuck inside my Oxford Book of English Poetry. It is certainly as good as many poems found in there. It intrigued me enough to do a fair amount of head-banging to parse it out. Thoughts/analysis:

1 had to go look up the Latin
2-5 brought to mind Tyger, Tyger “What dread hands?”
2-11 Sucked me right in. Past tense gives feeling of looking back over a dark abyss of horrors
12 Christ/logos cf. line 31
13 ….? Can’t parse this one.
14 The capital letter required at the beginning of the line is unfortunate, “A god” would make the line clearer
15-17 endearing
18 Must...not…use…comic-book goggles! Must see Nietzschean and Indian influences!

22 super-subtle?
28-29 “knew not where their scorn had laid/Our Master.” Clever.
30 Why is uncapricious in this line? Just for the meter?
Stanza 6, Nice feeling of marching towards the Throne at the end
line 36 typo: trold Unless Noyes was giving a poetic spelling to an internet verb? ;)
38…name is legion
58-62 He loses me a bit here. The shadows of the dead (Europeans?) are cast by English soldiers following behind?
63 cf this to lines 73-4, I get: England has been in the vanguard, showing Earth the way to fight darkness
64 happier sphere: celestial/hevenly from line 70?
68-73 Just lovely. Stirring.
74 has almost a science-fictiony feel to it
Last stanza: So he is hoping that England’s (present and future) conduct in the Great War, even if she loses? (stanza 9), will inspire all nations to justice & peace.

Looking back over the poem, that conduct would be the choice in lines 40-43 to repent the godlessness England and Europe had been sliding into in stanzas 4&5, and fight to the death in the cause of (capitalized) Right.

I had trouble with the second half until I grasped the fact that italics = quotes. I feel I must have seen this in poems before, but usually set off in its own stanzas?

So the answer to Under what banner?/Whose is the victory? is Ye/England, & by extension and example, Earth?

Thematically right in with Lewis and Chesterton then. Better than the bulk of either their poetry, as poetry. Funny to see Lewis’s “A Confession” just by it in my flist. Twice.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your exceptional care and attention. I have posted this both here and in the verse_albion community, and I got some interesting responses, but yours is so far both the most positive (more positive, in fact, than my own view of the poem) and much the most elaborate.

A few responses:
13) I think what he is saying is that the image of the modernist's world is in effect Lovecraftian - that the Being on Whom the world depends is a blind idiot god, asleep at the bottom of his universe, and certainly less in value than any good man. It's interesting that Lovecraft postulates a world of idiocy and horror but in which heroes can be found - where do they come from?
22) Super-subtle is in effect a Shakespearian word - you can find it in Othello - although here it seems to be used rather differently. On the whole, Noyes seems to have strained his vocabulary and imagery to convey his idea of modernism and the god of modernism.
36) AAAAAAARGGH!! Typo indeed.
58-62) the whole poem was composed for and dedicated to King Albert of Belgium, whose heroic resistance against unprovoked German attack opened the World War. The ghosts that march through Berlin - already conquered in spirit - are those of his fallen soldiers and of the civilians murdered by German troops. At the same time, they foreshadow the avenging Allied hosts that would one day march through Germany.
64) No, I think the happier sphere is the better future foretold in the closing lines.

I don't think he ever envisages England losing. Part of the point of the poem is that by assaulting innocent Belgium the Germans have insured their own ultimate defeat. And the "Ye" most often addressed in the poem is the Belgian nation.

My view of the poem is here: http://verse-albion.livejournal.com/2045.html , in the exchange with wemyss

[mr mandias (from livejournal.com)]

It's not a *bad* poem. But it doesn't have any breathtaking image or beautiful phrase, its a little muddy and tangled, and the phrase 'Super-Snake' tends to convulse the modern reader.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I think the sixth stanza is exceptionally good, and that the problem is that the poem declines after that. But thanks for your views.

[persephone-kore.livejournal.com]

I choked up over the seventh.

For whatever that says in the absence of systematic observation of what makes me cry and the literary merits thereof.