: Walking Shadows: Sea Tales and Others by Noyes Alfred - World War 1914-1918 Fiction; Short stories English; Sea stories English

@FreeBooksWed 07 Jun, 2023

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PRELUDE xi

WALKING SHADOWS

Of those who fought and died Unreckoned, undescried, Breaking no hearts but two or three that loved them; Of multitudes that gave Their memories to the grave, And the unrevealing seas of night removed them;

Of those unnumbered hosts Who smile at all our boasts And are not blazed on any scroll of glory; Mere out-posts in the night, Mere keepers of the light, Where history stops, let shadows weave a story.

Shadows, but ah, they know That history's pomp and show Are shadows of a shadow, gilt and painted. They see the accepted lie In robes of state go by. They see the prophet stoned, the trickster sainted.

And so my shadows turn To truths that they discern Beyond the ordered "facts" that fame would cherish. They walk awhile with dreams, They follow flying gleams And lonely lights at sea that pass and perish.

Not tragic all indeed, Not all without remede Of clean-edged mirth. Our Rosalie of laughter, The bayonet of a jest, May pierce the devil's breast, And give us room and time for grief, here-after.

So let them weep or smile Or kneel, or dance awhile, Fantastic shades, by wandering fires begotten; Remembrancers of themes That dawn may mock as dreams. Then let them sleep, at dawn, with the forgotten.

WALKING SHADOWS

THE LIGHT-HOUSE

When he first emerged, he had some difficulty in descrying his goal across that confused sea. His eye was guided by a patch of foam, larger than the ordinary run of white-caps, and glittering in the evening sun like a black-thorn blossom. As the sky brightened behind it, he saw, rising upright, like the single slim pistil of those rough white petals, the faint shaft of the light-house itself.

He stole nearer, till these pretty fancies were swallowed up in the savagery of the place. It greeted him with a deep muffled roar as of a hundred sea-lions, and the air grew colder with its thin mists of spray. The black thorns and white petals became an angry ship-wrecking ring of ax-headed rocks, furious with surf; and the delicate pistil assumed the stature of the Nelson Column.

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