Читать книгу Collected Poems: Volume One - Alfred Noyes - Страница 53

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Teach me to live and to forgive

The death that all must die

Who pass in slumber through this heaven

Of earth and sea and sky; Who live by grace of Time and Space

At which their peace is priced;

And cast their lots upon the robe

That wraps the cosmic Christ;

Who cannot see the world-wide Tree

Where Love lies bleeding still;

This universal cross of God

Our star-crowned Igdrasil.

Teach me to live; I do not ask

For length of earthly days,

Or that my heaven-appointed task

Should fall in pleasant ways;

If in this hour of warmth and light

The last great knell were knolled;

If Death should close mine eyes to-night

And all the tale be told;

While I have lips to speak or sing

And power to draw this breath,

Shall I not praise my Lord and King

Above all else, for death?

When on a golden eve he drove

His keenest sorrow deep

Deep in my heart, and called it love;

I did not wince or weep.

A wild Hosanna shook the world

And wakened all the sky,

As through a white and burning light

Her passionate face went by.

When on a golden dawn he called

My best beloved away,

I did not shrink or stand appalled

Before the hopeless day.

The joy of that triumphant dearth

And anguish cannot die;

The joy that casts aside this earth

For immortality.

I would not change one word of doom

Upon the dreadful scroll,

That gave her body to the tomb

And freed her fettered soul.

For now each idle breeze can bring

The kiss I never seek;

The nightingale has heard her sing,

The rose caressed her cheek.

And every pang of every grief

That ruled my soul an hour,

Has given new splendours to the leaf,

New glories to the flower;

And melting earth into the heaven

Whose inmost heart is pain,

Has drawn the veils apart and given

Her soul to mine again.