Alfred Noyes (Альфред Нойес)

Earth-Bound

Ghosts? Love would fain believe,
  Earth being so fair, the dead might wish to return!
  Is it so strange if, even in heaven, they yearn
For the May-time and the dreams it used to give?

Through dark abysms of Space,
  From strange new spheres where Death has called them now
  May they not, with a crown on every brow,
Still cry to the loved earth's lost familiar face?

We two, love, we should come
  Seeking a little refuge from the light
  Of the blinding terrible star-sown Infinite,
Seeking some sheltering roof, some four-walled home,

From that too high, too wide
  Communion with the universe and God,
  How glad to creep back to some lane we trod
Hemmed in with a hawthorn hedge on either side.

Fresh from death's boundless birth,
  How fond the circled vision of the sea
  Would seem to souls tired of Infinity,
How kind the soft blue boundaries of earth,

How rich the nodding spray
  Of pale green leaves that made the sapphire deep
  A background to the dreams of that brief sleep
We called our life when heaven was far away.

How strange would be the sight
  Of the little towns and twisted streets again,
  Where all the hurrying works and ways of men
Would seem a children's game for our delight.

What boundless heaven could give
  This joy in the strait austere restraints of earth,
  Whereof the dead have felt the immortal dearth
Who look upon God's face and cannot live?

Our ghosts would clutch at flowers
  As drowning men at straws, for fear the sea
  Should sweep them back to God's Eternity,
Still clinging to the day that once was ours.

No more with fevered brain
  Plunging across the gulfs of Space and Time
  Would we revisit this our earthly clime
We two, if we could ever come again;

Not as we came of old,
  But reverencing the flesh we now despise
  And gazing out with consecrated eyes,
Each of us glad of the other's hand to hold.

So we should wander nigh
  Our mortal home, and see its little roof
  Keeping the deep eternal night aloof
And yielding us a refuge from the sky.

We should steal in, once more,
  Under the cloudy lilac at the gate,
  Up the walled garden, then with hearts elate
Forget the stars and close our cottage door.

Oh then, as children use
  To make themselves a little hiding-place,
  We would rejoice in narrowness of space,
And God should give us nothing more to lose.

How good it all would seem
  To souls that from the æonian ebb and flow
  Came down to hear once more the to and fro
Swing o' the clock dictate its hourly theme.

How dear the strange recall
  From vast antiphonies of joy and pain
  Beyond the grave, to these old books again,
That cosy lamp, those pictures on the wall.

Home! Home! The old desire!
  We would shut out the innumerable skies,
  Draw close the curtains, then with patient eyes
  Bend o'er the hearth; laugh at our memories,
Or watch them crumbling in the crimson fire.

1. Princeton, May, 1917
2. Haunted in Old Japan
3. The Old Sceptic
4. The Elfin Artist
5. To the R. A. F.

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