This week’s poem is by a favourite poet: Alfred Noyes. It is “A Devonshire Ditty” which I have chosen for my cousin Linda, the inspiration behind Poet’s Day.
Tumble back again to Devon
Alfred Noyes (1880—1958)
Laugh and love as long ago,
Where there isn’t any fiery sword at all.
Poem 446. A Devonshire Ditty
I
In a leafy lane of Devon
There’s a cottage that I know,
Then a garden—then, a grey old crumbling wall,
And the wall’s the wall of heaven
(Where I hardly care to go)
And there isn’t any fiery sword at all.
II
But I never went to heaven.
There was right good reason why,
For they sent a shining angel to me there,
An angel, down in Devon,
(Clad in muslin by the bye)
With the halo of the sunshine on her hair.
III
Ah, whate’er the darkness covers,
And whate’er we sing or say,
Would you climb the wall of heaven an hour too soon
If you knew a place for lovers
Where the apple-blossoms stray
Out of heaven to sway and whisper to the moon?
IV
When we die—we’ll think of Devon
Where the garden’s all aglow
With the flowers that stray across the grey old wall:
Then we’ll climb it, out of heaven,
From the other side, you know,
Straggle over it from heaven
With the apple-blossom snow,
Tumble back again to Devon
Laugh and love as long ago,
Where there isn’t any fiery sword at all.
This is Alfred Noyes’s reminiscence of his time in Devon and the joy he found there.
We begin with his description of a traditional Devonshire cottage which he compares to Heaven indirectly by comparing the old stone wall around its garden to the walls God placed around the garden of Eden after casting out Adam and Eve and commenting that unlike Eden, his garden hasn’t “any fiery sword at all”.
So He drove out the man; and He placed at the east of the Garden of Eden cherubims and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
The Bible, 21st Century King James Version
But, he says, he never went to heaven because there was no need—“There was right good reason why”—an angel came to him instead, her hair shining gold in the sunshine and “clad in muslin”. He is praising his second wife—a Devonshire woman—as an angel.
He asks if any of us would choose to die (“climb the wall of heaven an hour too soon”), even in the direst of circumstances and whatever we might believe, if we knew of such a place so close to Heaven on Earth.
When they die, he suggests that he and his wife will climb the wall of Eden and find themselves back in that Devonshire garden since the walls of the two gardens are one and the same—he found such happiness there that it must be close to Paradise but there they will once again “Laugh and love as long ago,/Where there isn’t any fiery sword at all.”
I like this poem because it reminds me of time spent in Devonshire when I was young and because it’s beautifully put. I like Noyes’s idea of the old garden wall being one and same with the walls around Eden and I like the rhythm of the poem. There are (as so often with Noyes) some beautiful phrases too: “the halo of the sunshine on her hair”, “Where the apple-blossoms stray/Out of Heaven to sway and whisper to the moon?” and “Straggle over it from heaven/With the apple-blossom snow”.
There are no performances of the poem online.
I chose the poem because it reminds me of the Devonshire places, so near to heaven in my memories, and because my cousin Linda urged me to start writing Poet’s Day six years ago and I have not yet dedicated a poem to her. This one is dedicated to you, dear cousin.