Lyr Add: Old Grey Squirrel, The (Alfred Noyes)

Subject: Lyr Add: THE OLD GREY SQUIRREL (Alfred Noyes)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 16 May 06 - 08:18 PM

I've heard this Alfred Noyes poem song by both Tom Lewis and Bob Zentz and it strikes a familiar and disquieting chord. Zentz adapted the poem for singing and Lewis has recorded it on MIXED CARGO, ©1999:

THE OLD GREY SQUIRREL
(By Alfred Noyes)

A great while ago there was a schoolboy
        who lived in a cottage by the sea,
And the very first thing he could remember
        was the rigging of the schooners by the quay.
He could watch 'em from his bedroom window
        with the big cranes a-hauling out the freight,
And he used to dream of shipping as a sea-cook
        and a-sailing for the Golden Gate.

He used to buy the yellow penny dreadfuls,
        he'd read 'em where he fished for conger eels,
As he listened to the slapping of the water
        the green and oily water round the keels,
There were trawlers with their shark-mouthed flatfish
        and the nets a-hanging out to dry,
And the skate the skipper kept because he liked 'em
        and the landsmen never knew which ones to fry.
There were brigantines with timber out of Norway
        just oozing with the syrups of the pine,
There were rusty dusty freighters out of Sunderland
        and clippers of the Blue Cross Line.

To tumble down the hatch into a cabin
        was better than the best of broken rules,
For the smell of 'em was like a Christmas dinner
        and the feel of 'em was like a box of tools,
And before he went to sleep in the evenings
        the last thing that he would ever see,
Was the sailormen a-dancing in the moonlight
        by the capstan that stood beside the quay.

Now he's sitting on a high-stool in London,
        the Golden Gate is far away,
For the caught him like a squirrel and they caged him,
        now he's totting up accounts and turning grey,
And he'll never get to San Francisco
        and the last thing that he will ever see,
Is the sailormen a-dancing in the moonlight
        by the capstan that stands beside the quay.
To the tune of the old concertina
        by the capstan that stands beside the quay.

There is a sequel to this poem called "THE ESCAPE OF OLD GREY SQUIRREL" by Noyes. So even the poet couldn't stand the utter despair of the original, but that's what makes the poem!

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Old Grey Squirrel, The
From: EBarnacle
Date: 17 May 06 - 04:24 PM

Charley, I just did a search for the escape poem and could not find it. Would you please post it. thanx

Subject: Lyr Add: ESCAPE OF OLD GREY SQUIRREL (Alfred Noyes
From: Charley Noble
Date: 17 May 06 - 10:34 PM

Eric-

Say "please!" Oh, you did. Here it is, weird thing and a bit long in the tooth:

THE ESCAPE OF OLD GREY SQUIRREL

(By Alfred Noyes, and seems to be a sort of sequel to Noyes' other poem, which is called "Old Grey Squirrel")

Old Grey Squirrel might have been
Almost anything -
Might have been a soldier, sailor,
Tinker, tailor
(Never a beggar-man, though, nor thief).
Might have been, perhaps, a king,
Or an Indian chief.

He remained a City clerk
Doubled on a great high stool,
Totting up, from dawn to dark,
Figures, figures, figures, figures,
Red ink, black ink, double rule,
Tot-tot-totting with his pen,
Up and down and round again -
Curious Old Grey Squirrel.

No one ever really knew
What he did at night,
In his room so near the roof,
Up those steep and narrow stairs.
Old Grey Squirrel wasn't quite
The same as other men.
What he said was always true;
He was like a little child
In a thousand things.
Something shy and delicate,
Cold and grave and undefiled,
Seemed to keep him quite aloof.
You could never call him lonely,
Though he lived with memory there.

When he knelt beside his bed
He had nothing much to say
But the simplest little prayer
Learned in childhood, long ago,
And he didn't know or care
Whether Calvinists might call it
Praying for the dead.


Father, mother, sister, brother -
Memories clear as evening bells;
Yes, the very sort of thing
All your clever little scribblers
Love to satirize and sting,
So let's talk of something else.
He collected stamps, you know,
Commonplace Old Squirrel.

Ah, but could you see him there,
When the day's grey work was done,
Poring over his new stamps
With that wise old air;
Looking up the curious places
In his tattered atlas, too
Lands of jungle and of sun,
Ivory tusks and dusky faces,
Whence his latest treasure flew
Like a tropic moth, he thought,
To flutter round his dying lamp. . . .


Visions are not bought and sold;
But, when the foreign mail came in
Bringing his employers news
Of copper, sulphide, zinc and tin
(And the red resultant gold),
Envelopes were thrown away,
So, of course, one clearly sees
He could pick, and he could choose,
Having, as he used to say,
"Very great advantages."
Rarities could not be bought.
Bus fares don't leave much for spending
On a flight to Zipangu.

All the same, one never knew.
All things come to those who wait -
Isles of palm in rose and blue,
India, China and Peru,
And the Golden Gate.

So he'd turn his treasures over-
Mauve and crimson, buff and cream-
Every stamp an elfin window
Opening on a boy's lost dream.
"Curious, curious, that's Jamaica,
That's Hong Kong (the twopenny red),
I've no doubt they are well worth seeing,
Well worth seeing," Old Squirrel said.

"Curious" - curious was his word -
Old Grey Squirrel remembered a day
Sitting alone in a whispering fir-wood
(This was in boyhood before they caught him)
Writing a story of far Cathay,
A tale that his friends would think absurd
But would make him famous when he was dead.
"Curious" - thinking of all those years,
All those dreams that had drifted away -
Once, he had thought - but the years had taught him,
Taught him better, and bowed his head.

"Curious" - memory clings and lingers -
Clings - the smell of the fir wood - clings . . .
Through his wrinkled ink-stained fingers,
"Curious, curious," trickled the tears,
Curious Old Grey Squirrel.

No, you'd hardly call it weeping.
Old Grey Squirrel could not weep.
Head on arm, he might have been
Sleeping; but he did not know.
Most of us are sound asleep;
And, that Christmas Eve, it seems,
He awoke, at last, from dreams.
Gently, as a woman's hand
Something touched him on the brow,
And he woke, in that strange land -
Where he lives for ever now.

All things come to those who wait -
Palms against a deeper blue,
Far Cathay and Zipangu,
And the Golden Gate.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Old Grey Squirrel, The
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 17 May 06 - 10:43 PM

Thanks for posting these. Somewhere I have a book of his poems, but I don't remember that any were as interesting as these.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Old Grey Squirrel, The (Alfred Noyes)
From: EBarnacle
Date: 18 May 06 - 11:09 AM

Thanks, Charley. As you say, the poem is a sort of downer. I was hoping for a physical escape, not an escape from the physical. Sort of a precurser to Eleanor Rigby.