Alfred Noyes

A Post-Impression

I

He sat with his foolish mouth agape at the golden glare of the sea,
  And his wizened and wintry flaxen locks fluttered around his ears,
And his foolish infinite eyes were full of the sky's own glitter
and glee,
  As he dandled an old Dutch Doll on his knee and sang the song of
the spheres.

II

Blue and red and yellow and green they are melting away in the white;
Hey! but the wise old world was wrong and my idiot heart was right;
Yes; and the merry-go-round of the stars rolls to my cracked old tune,
Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over
the moon.

III

Then he cradled his doll on his crooning heart and cried as a sea-bird
cries;
  And the hot sun reeled like a drunken god through the violent violet
vault:
And the hillside cottage that danced to the deep debauch of the
perfumed skies
  Grew palsied and white in the purple heath as a pillar of Dead
  Sea salt.

IV

There were three gaunt sun-flowers nigh his chair: they were yellow as
death and tall;
And they threw their sharp blue shadowy stars on the blind white
wizard wall;
And they nodded their heads to the weird old hymn that daunted the light
of the noon,
Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over
the moon.

V

The little dog laughed and leered with the white of his eye as he
sidled away
  To stare at the dwarfish hunchback waves that crawled to the foot of
the hill,
For his master's infinite mind was wide to the wealth of the night
and the day;
  The walls were down: it was one with the Deep that only a God
  can fill.

VI

Then a tiny maiden of ten sweet summers arrived with a song and
a smile,
And she swung on the elfin garden-gate and sung to the sea for
a while,
And a phantom face went weeping by and a ghost began to croon
Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over
the moon.

VII

And she followed a butterfly up to his chair; and the moon-calf caught
at her hand
  And stared at her wide blue startled eyes and muttered, "My dear,
I have been,
In fact, I am there at this moment, I think, in a wonderful fairy-land:"
  And he bent and he whispered it low in her ear--"I know why the
grass is green.

VIII

"I know why the daisy is white, my dear, I know why the seas are blue;
I know that the world is a dream, my dear, and I know that the dream
is true;
I know why the rose and the toad-stool grow, as a curse and a
crimson boon,
Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over
the moon.

IX

"If I gaze at a rose, do you know, it grows till it overshadows
the earth,
  Like a wonderful Tree of Knowledge, my dear, the Tree of our evil
and good;
But I dare not tell you the terrible vision that gave the toad-stool
birth,
  The dream of a heart that breaks, my dear, and a Tree that is
bitter with blood.

X

"Oh, Love may wander wide as the wind that blows from sea to sea,
But a wooden dream, for me, my dear, and a painted memory;
For the God that has bidden the toad-stool grow has writ in his
cosmic rune,
Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over
the moon."

XI

Then he stared at the child and he laughed aloud, and she suddenly
screamed and fled,
  As he dreamed of enticing her out thro' the ferns to a quarry
that gapped the hill,
To hurtle her down and grin as her gold hair scattered around
her head
  Far, far below, like a sunflower disk, so crimson-spattered
and still.

XII

"Ah, hush!" he cried; and his dark old eyes were wet with a sacred love
As he kissed the wooden face of his doll and winked at the skies above,
"I know, I know why the toad-stools grow, and the rest of the world
will, soon;
Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over
the moon."

XIII

"Blue and red and yellow and green they are all mixed up in the white;
Hey! but the wise old world was wrong and my idiot heart was right;
Yes; and the merry-go-round of the stars rolls to my cracked old tune,
Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over
the moon."