Barstow School - Weathercock Yearbook (Kansas City, MO)

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6 THE W EATI Hill-COCK Sea. It breaths the lure of adventure, the fresh wind off the bounding waves. the smell of the salt spray. all the heroism and all the pathos of the Merchant Adventurers life. And the song sings itself. as all true poetry should. XVe can never forget the booming of his chorus- Over our fleet for evermore The winds will triumph and the waves roar! But he sails on. sails on before! It awakens in us a fire and enthusiasm that only a simple tale of dearly honored people and true heroism can raise. We feel it is true to our ideals. Rollicking songs are jolly, and high heroism is noblel but there is something even more impressive than heroism, and that is,-struggling failure. Those poor gold-laden spirits that sink for lack of ballast. they are the pitiful warnings of the world: those wrecks of promise, those need- less bankrupts, those total losses.-and all for slavery to some petty weak- ness. These touch us through our sympathies, and through our common sense. too. Gazing at such a ruin fine sense says. What a loss to the world1 sympathy moans, 'iWhat tortures and woes to a golden lad! Look at poor Robin Greene with One groat's worth of wit. Bought at an exceeding price, Ay, a million of repentance, and at Kit Marlowe, the simple fool, Dead, like a dog upon the roadg Dead, for a harlot's kissl The Apollian throat and brow, The lyric lips, so silent now, The flaming wings that heaven bestowed For loftier airs than this! But to think of Noyes as a black moralist. a high-tragedy preacher. a sombre-clad Langland. a dog of a Puritan, is to think of the root as the tree. True, if the center of life be sound. the tree grows straight and grace- ful. And Noyes is sound: a jolly rogue. guffawing over a good joke, amusedly smiling over a witticism, sunny. cheerful, and a good-fellow with all his seriousness. I-low he chuckles over Black Bill, the atheist buccaneer. 'AWith a disk of a lily behind his head Like a cherubin's aureolef' And how amused he is at the drone of Francis Bacon, the ponderous, scientific judge with his Pliny saith and various principles of natural philosophy that make a

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' 'A H Literary Department D C? 'J Tales of the Mermaid Tavern L BY ALFRED NOYES L- GREAT worship-love 7 for the Elizabethan age seems to have sprung YE up lately in the world QEYHAQDTRVEYH of letters. Parker, with his pageant plays, X T' is holding the world spell-bouncll but lj 19 mA,l, i Alfred Noyes in his Tales of the lg 'lss' Mermaid Tavern has given us the most graceful picture of those high and far-off times. l'-lis poems may not be so vigorous and swash-buckling as the virile Drake, but they far outweigh it in passing on to us the mellow romrnce, the overpowering wonder, the alluring charm of that llmrulz by Cazzxfzuzrr I'ru.vmff golden age of epoch-making men Vifalking with him along a street of London, of modern work-a-day London shrouded in fog. he points out to us the blue bus with its announce- ment This night, at eight. the Tempest, and. with his, our thoughts fly back to The Warwickshire Lad. NVith him we wander through the narrow streets and come upon that ancient inn of mullioned panes. And as we knock. the spell is completed. We are back three hundred years. We enter the hallowed tavern amid the clash of wine cups and see all our friends.-our gods,--from Will Shakespeare to Raleigh.-the graceful Raleigh dight in his stained cloak, tall, straight and splendid as a sunset- cloudf' And many more were there and all were young! l've found a tragedy for you. l-lave you heard the true tale of Sir Humphrey Gilbert? cries the Knight of thc muddy coatg and he swings into the roll of an ocean ballad. A strong. heroic picture he paints. of the last adventure of Sir Humphrey Gilbert Knight of the Ocean

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TALEs OF THE MERMAID TAVERN 7 X ik 3' light gleam of celestial mirth Flit o'er the face of Shakespeare-scarce a smile- A swift irradiation from within As of a cloud that softly veils the sun. l-low light and effervescent is the Companion of a Mile! 'Tis like the first bird song in spring, like a whiff of lilac bloom, like a tenor morris-bell. lt dances tipsily, light-heartedly by. One would almost think the words would dance themselves off the page- - I fitted her with morris-bells, with treble, bass and tenor bells. And o'er a field of buttercups, a field of lambs and buttercups, We danced along a cloth of gold, a summer king and queen. Then listen to him next bawl forth a drinking song. Our Noyes is no molly-coddle. For l-larry the Fourth was a godly king And loved great godly bells! He bade them ring and he bade them swing Till a man might hear naught else. ln every tavern it soured the sack With discord and with din, But they drowned it all in a madrigal Like this at the Mermaid lnn. And then there is the simple, mystic Noyes, the poet who gloats over a sweetly morbid tale and lets his fancy play about a subject awful and solemn until we have a dirge like 'iThe Burial of the Queen. or such a tragic picture as that of Raleighs wife, 'iwith a smile that would make angels weep, nursing his severed head terrible as Medusa. And so in an instant Noyes is the lover, the jester, the moralist, the troubadour, the mourner. What true poet is not! But, like Will Shakespeare himself, the distinguishing quality of the writer of the Mermaid Tavern Tales is a genius for re-creating characters, for making past heroes live again, real yet ideal. To him Raleigh, Gilbert, Marlowe, jonson, Stukeley, Greene, Drayton, Peel. Lodge, Beau- mont and Fletcher have never died. It would seem saerilege to make these gods seem common spirits, and yet it is their very humanness that: so appeals to us. There is something comforting in the thought that they were once men, even as it is consoling to remember jesus was a child. But the danger of such a task is likely to be a shattering of ideals. Noyes, however, has come at the human souls in those Elizabethan geniuses with-