Haunted In Old Japan

Music of the star-shine shimmering o’er the sea

Mirror me no longer in the dusk of memory:

Dim and white the rose-leaves drift along the shore

Wind among the roses, blow no more!

All along the purple creek, lit with silver foam,

Silent, silent voices, cry no more of home;

Soft beyond the cherry-trees, o’er the dim lagoon,

Dawns the crimson lantern of the large low moon.

III

We that loved in April, we that turned away

Laughing, ere the wood-dove crooned across the May,

Watch the withered rose-leaves drift along the shore.

Wind among the roses, blow no more!

We that saw the winter waste the weeping bower,

We that saw the young love perish like a flower,

We that saw the dark eyes deepening with tears,

Hear the vanished voices in the land beyond the years.

We that hurt the thing we loved; we that went astray,

We that in the darkness idly dreamed of day . . .

. . . Ah! The dreary rose-leaves drift along the shore.

Wind among the roses, blow no more!

Lonely starry faces, wonderful and white,

Yearning with a cry across the dim sweet night,

All our dreams are blown a-drift as flowers before a fan,

All our hearts are haunted in the heart of old Japan.

VII

Haunted, haunted, haunted; we that mocked and sinned

Hear the vanished voices wailing down the wind,

Watch the ruined rose-leaves drift along the shore;

Wind among the roses, blow no more!

VIII

We, the sons of reason, we that chose to bride

Knowledge and rejected the Dream that we denied,

We that mocked the Holy Ghost and chose the Son of Man, [1]

Now must wander haunted in the heart of old Japan

Haunted, haunted, haunted, by the sound of falling tears,

Haunted, haunted, haunted, by the yearning of the years;

Ah! the phantom rose-leaves drift along the shore;

Wind among the roses, blow no more!

All along the purple creek, lit with silver foam,

Sobbing, sobbing voices, cry no more of home:

Soft beyond the cherry trees, o’er the dim lagoon,

Dawns the crimson lantern of the large, low moon.

Alfred Noyes

Alfred Noyes, (born Sept. 16, 1880, Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, Eng.—died June 28, 1958, Isle of Wight), English poet, a traditionalist remembered chiefly for his lyrical verse. Noyes’ first volume of poems, The Loom of Years (1902), published while he was still at the University of Oxford, was followed by others that showed patriotic fervor and a love for the sea. He taught modern English literature at Princeton University in the United States from 1914 to 1923. Of Noyes’s later works, the most notable is the epic trilogy The Torch-Bearers (1922–30), which took as its theme the progress of science through the ages. His autobiography, Two Worlds for Memory, appeared in 1953. Noyes married Garnett Daniels in 1907, and they had three children. His increasing popularity allowed the family to live off royalty checks. In 1914, Noyes accepted a teaching position at Princeton University, where he taught English Literature until 1923. He was a noted critic of modernist writers, particularly James Joyce. Likewise, his work at this time was criticized by some for its refusal to embrace the modernist movement. After the death of his wife, Garnett in 1926, Noyes converted to Roman Catholicism and married his second wife, Mary Angela Mayne Weld-Blundell. In 1929, the family moved to Lisle Combe, St Lawrence, Isle of Wight where Noyes continued to write essays and poems, culminating in the collection, Orchard's Bay (1939). Alfred Noyes died on June 25, 1958, and was buried on the Isle of Wight.

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