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Title: In Memory Of A British Aviator
Author: Alfred Noyes [
More Titles by Noyes]
On those young brows that knew no fear
We lay the Roman athlete's crown,
The laurel of the charioteer,
The imperial garland of renown,
While those young eyes, beyond the sun,
See Drake, see Raleigh, smile "Well done."
Their desert seas that knew no shore
To-night with fleets like cities flare;
But, frailer even than theirs of yore,
His keel a new-found deep would dare:
They watch, with thrice-experienced eyes
What fleets shall follow through the skies.
They would not scoff, though man should set
To feebler wings a mightier task.
They know what wonders wait us yet.
Not all things in an hour they ask;
But in each noble failure see
The inevitable victory.
A thousand years have borne us far
From that dark isle the Saxon swayed,
And star whispers to trembling star
While Space and Time shrink back afraid,--
"Ten thousand thousand years remain
For man to dare our deep again."
Thou, too, shalt hear across that deep
Our thundering fleets of thought draw nigh,
Round which the suns and systems sweep
Like cloven foam from sky to sky,
Till Death himself at last restore
His captives to our eyes once more.
* * * * *
Feeble the wings, dauntless the soul!
Take thou the conqueror's laurel crown;
Take--for thy chariot grazed the goal--
The imperial garland of renown;
While those young eyes, beyond the sun,
See Drake, see Raleigh, smile "Well done."
[The end]
Alfred Noyes's poem: In Memory Of A British Aviator
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