File_ and in _Mount Ida_. The poem _Astrid_, included in
the volume _The Lord of Misrule_ (1915), is an experiment in
_initial_ rhymes. Try reading it aloud.

White-armed Astrid,--ah, but she was beautiful!--
Nightly wandered weeping thro' the ferns in the moon,
Slowly, weaving her strange garland in the forest,
Crowned with white violets,
Gowned in green.
Holy was that glen where she glided,
Making her wild garland as Merlin had bidden her,
Breaking off the milk-white horns of the honeysuckle,
Sweetly dripped the new upon her small white
Feet.

The English national poetry of Mr. Noyes worthily expresses the spirit
of the British people, and indeed of the Anglo-Saxon race. We are no
lovers of war; military ambition or the glory of conquest is not
sufficient motive to call either Great Britain or America to arms; but
if the gun-drunken Germans really believed that the English and
Americans would not fight to save the world from an unspeakable
despotism, they made the mistake of their lives. There must be a
Cause, there must be an Idea, to draw out the full fighting strength
of the Anglo-Saxons. Alfred Noyes made a correct diagnosis and a
correct prophecy in 1911, when he published _The Sword of
England_.

She sheds no blood to that vain god of strife
Whom tyrants call "renown";
She knows that only they who reverence life