| Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895. |
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| The Merry-Go-Round |
| | | Roden Berkeley Wriothesley Noel (1834–94) |
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| THE MERRY-GO-ROUND, the merry-go-round, the merry-go-round at Fowey! | |
| They whirl around, they gallop around, man, woman, and girl, and boy; | |
| They circle on wooden horses, white, black, brown, and bay, | |
| To a loud monotonous tune that hath a trumpet bray. | |
| All is dark where the circus stands on the narrow quay, | 5 |
| Save for its own yellow lamps, that illumine it brilliantly: | |
| Painted purple and red, it pours a broad strong glow | |
| Over an old-world house, with a pillar’d place below; | |
| For the floor of the building rests on bandy columns small, | |
| And the bulging pile may, tottering, suddenly bury all. | 10 |
| But there upon wooden benches, hunch’d in the summer night, | |
| Sit wrinkled sires of the village arow, whose hair is white; | |
| They sit like the mummies of men, with a glare upon them cast | |
| From a rushing flame of the living, like their own mad past; | |
| They are watching the merry-make, and their face is very grave; | 15 |
| Over all are the silent stars! beyond, the cold gray wave. | |
| And while I gaze on the galloping horses circling round, | |
| The men caracoling up and down to a weird, monotonous sound, | |
| I pass into a bewilderment, and marvel why they go; | |
| It seems the earth revolving, with our vain to and fro! | 20 |
| For the young may be glad and eager, but some ride listlessly, | |
| And the old look on with a weary, dull, and lifeless eye; | |
| I know that in an hour the fair will all be gone, | |
| Stars shining over a dreary void, the Deep have sound alone. | |
| I gaze with orb suffus’d at human things that fly, | 25 |
| And I am lost in the wonder of our dim destiny…. | |
| The merry-go-round, the merry-go-round, the merry-go-round at Fowey! | |
| They whirl around, they gallop around, man, woman, and girl, and boy. | |
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