MANHOOD AND ITS VIGOR
Virility like unto steel is the very mark of Noyes. But as this study
of Childhood has shown, it is a virility touched with tenderness. As
Bayard Taylor sings:
"The bravest are the tenderest,
The loving are the daring!"
And this is Noyes. Noyes knew Manhood, he sang it, he challenged it
too, he crowned it in "Drake"; he placed it a little lower than the
gods. Hear this supreme word, enough to lift man to the skies:
"Where, what a dreamer yet, in spite of all,
Is man, that splendid visionary child
Who sent his fairy beacon through the dusk!"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
This tribute to Marlow--how eaglelike it is! How suggestive of heights,
and mountain peaks and blue skies and far-flung stars!
"But he who dared the thunder-roll,
Whose eagle-wings could soar,
Buffeting down the clouds of night,
To beat against the Light of Light,
That great God-blinded eagle-soul,
We shall not see him more!"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
Then he makes us one with all that is granite and flower and high and
holy in "The Loom of the Years":
"One with the flower of a day, one with the withered moon,
One with the granite mountains that melt into the noon,
One with the dream that triumphs beyond the light of the spheres,
We come from the Loom of the Weaver, that weaves the Web of the
years.
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