Читать книгу Collected Poems: Volume Two - Alfred Noyes - Страница 16

EDINBURGH

City of mist and rain and blown grey spaces,

Dashed with wild wet colour and gleam of tears,

Dreaming in Holyrood halls of the passionate faces

Lifted to one Queen's face that has conquered the years,

Are not the halls of thy memory haunted places?

Cometh there not as a moon (where the blood-rust sears

Floors a-flutter of old with silks and laces),

Gliding, a ghostly Queen, thro' a mist of tears?

Proudly here, with a loftier pinnacled splendour,

Throned in his northern Athens, what spells remain

Still on the marble lips of the Wizard, and render

Silent the gazer on glory without a stain! Here and here, do we whisper, with hearts more tender,

Tusitala wandered thro' mist and rain;

Rainbow-eyed and frail and gallant and slender,

Dreaming of pirate-isles in a jewelled main.

III

Up the Canongate climbeth, cleft asunder

Raggedly here, with a glimpse of the distant sea

Flashed through a crumbling alley, a glimpse of wonder,

Nay, for the City is throned on Eternity!

Hark! from the soaring castle a cannon's thunder

Closeth an hour for the world and an æon for me,

Gazing at last from the martial heights whereunder

Deathless memories roll to an ageless sea.