"And the wheeling world remembers..." - Sipping Beauty: Considering 'The Barrel-Organ' by Alfred Noyes

 

Kew Gardens, Camille Pissarro

I haven’t done a “Sipping Beauty” essay in a while (I write about what I intend for this series here) so I thought I’d share this poem that I’ve been thinking about since I read it last week: The Barrel-Organ by Alfred Noyes.

Searching for essays or commentaries on this poem led me to some entertaining contradictions. One person said, “Alfred Noyes captured the popular ear. Such jingling, crude pieces as the famous ‘Barrel Organ’ delight the rough ear with their jerking tunes.” Another said, “Whoever stops to reflect on the skill of the poet's hand, on the sincerity of his ‘lyric cry,’ and on the solid merit behind his versatility, cannot but like his work.” I guess Noyes isn’t for everyone. But what poet is?

The Barrel-Organ is appropriately described as jerking, but I believe that jerking feeling is intentional. It is written in a mix of lyric and ballad forms, and Noyes quickly switches back and forth between them, giving the whole poem a sing-song “jingling” quality that is almost dizzying at times. This back-and-forth embodies not only the music of the barrel-organs but the way song would butt up against song as the barrel-organ played. (It is also the way life often feels.) More about that in a bit.

The poem feels light and playful until about the middle when the verses shift from repetitive folk-song and nursery-rhyme type songs to short vignettes of the different types of people who hear and are affected by the tunes played by the barrel-organ. These little portraits are linked by the repetition of the lines “The City as the sun sinks low” and “In the land where the dead dreams go” which gives this section a darker, more somber, nostalgic tone and contrasts with the framing repetition of “Go down/Come up to Kew in lilac time, in lilac time, in lilac time.”  

This section sketches out the idea of nostalgia, of remembering and experiencing a sense of loss during quiet, reflective moments in normal, busy life. Those moments when we look up from our daily grind and ask, “What is it all for, anyway?” 

A few verses from the end, the poem's first verses are nearly repeated, with a bit of change, and the idea of the cycle of the songs brings the poem full circle, almost like a musical round:

…as the music changes

   The song runs round again.

Once more it turns and ranges

   Through all its joys and pain,

Dissects the common carnival

   Of passions and regrets; 

And the wheeling world remembers all 

   The wheeling song forgets.”

The idea of the song running round and turning describes not just an idea of songs cycling through our minds or even the endlessly cyclical feeling of life (it does that, too) but it also refers to the wooden cylinder with metal pins (similar to the metal cylinder in a music box) that sits inside the barrel organ and turned by a crank. It is by turning this cylinder that the songs are played. From a Wikipedia article:

"The pieces of music (or tunes) are encoded onto the barrel using metal pins and staples." 

And

"Street barrel organs usually play 7 to 9 tunes, although small organs (usually the older ones) can play up to 15 tunes. Less commonly (and usually for large orchestrions) the pinning will form one continuous spiral and the barrel will be gradually moved as it rotates so that the pins remain lined up with the keys. In this case, each barrel plays only one long tune." (1)

This is exactly the form the poem takes - jerking, kind of repetitive, with moods oddly juxtaposed. It feels like a portrait of an inner landscape.

The poem ends with a call to “Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn’t far from London!).” This reminds me of Celtic fairy tales and the call to the Otherworld. The barrel-organ is playing tunes that are calling its listeners out of their “sooty City” and into the Kew Gardens, but also, beyond the gardens, out of “the land where the dead dreams go” to a place where they can hear “the Symphony that rules the day and night.” 

The whole poem is a picture of how music, in this case folk songs and ballads and even operatic arias played on metal tubes, can lift the soul of man to higher things. The first verse is key to the entire poem. The music itself may be a cheap imitation of better things, but it still directs the mind to those better things, and that is good. Not just good, but necessary.

...the music's not immortal; but the world has made it sweet

    And fulfilled it with the sunset glow;

And it pulses through the pleasures of the City and the pain

    That surround the singing organ like a large eternal light;

And they’ve given it a glory and a part to play again

    In the Symphony that rules the day and night.

When I read this poem, I thought of something C.S. Lewis said in An Experiment in Criticism, that a real transcendent experience with literature can be had by a child reading Treasure Island or some other book we wouldn’t necessarily think of as high art. What makes this a literary experience is that the child is drawn out of himself and into the world of the story, a larger world and one that helps him see his own world more clearly. Noyes writes that “the world…fulfilled” the barrel-organ’s music “with the sunset glow” which has “given it a glory and a part to play again/In the Symphony that rules the day and night.” Later he writes that “as the music changes…it takes the light and…/Dissects the common carnival of passions and regrets,/And gives the world a glimpse of all/The colors it forgets.” The songs of the barrel-organ draw the listeners up and out of their routines. The music wakes those shuffling through life and causes them to think, to pay attention, to notice what is missing and to long for it. 

This is a function of art and beauty at every level of their existence, from the arias of Verdi to the repetitive, seemingly nonsense songs of childhood. Higher, transcendent things can come to us in unexpected places. Ordinary enjoyments can indeed carry us up to higher joys. A song from the footnotes of our childhood can cause us to “remember what the wheeling world forgets,” and in that remembering the cycle is broken, if only for a moment, and we can rise up to better things. Because the organ isn't playing music in a purely material universe. As Noyes writes:

all around the organ there’s a sea without a shore 

   Of human joys and wonders and regrets; 

To remember and to recompense the music evermore 

   For what the cold machinery forgets. . . .

If you are interested, I found this lovely article in the New York Times archive from 1977 about The Barrel-Organ. It is a brief story of how a well-loved poem can create an instant bond between strangers.  

One final note: three times, Noyes mentions Verdi's name and twice he mentions 2 of his operas, La Traviata and Il Trovatore. Hilariously, there is a story about Verdi being so annoyed by the near-constant playing of tunes from his operas that he hired all the barrel-organs in the city for an entire season and stored them all in a room of his house so he wouldn't have to hear them as he walked down the streets. (2)

The Barrel-Organ

by Alfred Noyes

There’s a barrel-organ carolling across a golden street

    In the City as the sun sinks low;

And the music's not immortal; but the world has made it sweet

    And fulfilled it with the sunset glow;

And it pulses through the pleasures of the City and the pain

    That surround the singing organ like a large eternal light;

And they’ve given it a glory and a part to play again

    In the Symphony that rules the day and night.

And now it’s marching onward through the realms of old romance

    And trolling out a fond familiar tune,

And now it’s roaring cannon down to fight the King of France,

    And now it’s prattling softly to the moon,

And all around the organ there’s a sea without a shore

    Of human joys and wonders and regrets;

To remember and to recompense the music evermore

    For what the cold machinery forgets. . . .

                  Yes; as the music changes,

                      Like a prismatic glass,

                  It takes the light and ranges

                      Through all the moods that pass;

                  Dissects the common carnival

                      Of passions and regrets,

                  And gives the world a glimpse of all

                      The colours it forgets.

                  And there La Traviata sighs

                      Another sadder song;

                  And there Il Trovatore cries

                      A tale of deeper wrong;

                  And bolder knights to battle go

                      With sword and shield and lance,

                  Than ever here on earth below

                      Have whirled into—a dance!—

Go down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac-time, in lilac-time;

   Go down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn’t far from London!)

And you shall wander hand in hand with love in summer’s wonderland;

   Go down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn’t far from London!)

The cherry-trees are seas of bloom and soft perfume and sweet perfume,

    The cherry-trees are seas of bloom (and oh, so near to London!)

And there they say, when dawn is high and all the world’s a blaze of sky      

    The cuckoo, though he’s very shy, will sing a song for London.

The Dorian nightingale is rare and yet they say you’ll hear him there

    At Kew, at Kew in lilac-time (and oh, so near to London!)

The linnet and the throstle, too, and after dark the long halloo

    And golden-eyed tu-whit, tu-whoo, of owls that ogle London.

For Noah hardly knew a bird of any kind that isn’t heard

    At Kew, at Kew in lilac-time (and oh, so near to London!)

And when the rose begins to pout and all the chestnut spires are out

    You’ll hear the rest without a doubt, all chorussing for London:—

Come down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac-time, in lilac-time;

    Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn’t far from London!)

And you shall wander hand in hand with love in summer’s wonderland;

    Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn’t far from London!)

And then the troubadour begins to thrill the golden street,   

    In the City as the sun sinks low;

And in all the gaudy busses there are scores of weary feet

Making time, sweet time, with a dull mechanic beat,

And a thousand hearts are plunging to a love they’ll never meet,

Through the meadows of the sunset, through the poppies and the wheat,      

    In the land where the dead dreams go.

Verdi, Verdi, when you wrote Il Trovatore did you dream

    Of the city when the sun sinks low,

Of the organ and the monkey and the many-coloured stream

On the Picadilly pavement, of the myriad eyes that seem

To be litten for a moment with a wild Italian gleam

As A che la morte parodies the world's eternal theme

    And pulses with the sunset-glow.

There's a thief, perhaps, that listens with a face of frozen stone

    In the City as the sun sinks low;

There's a portly man of business with a balance of his own,

There's a clerk and there's a butcher of a soft reposeful tone.

And they're all of them returning to the heavens they have known:

They are crammed and jammed in busses and—they're each of them alone

    In the land where the dead dreams go.

There's a very modish woman and her smile is very bland

    In the City as the sun sinks low;

And her hansom jingles onward, but her little jewelled hand

Is clenched a little tighter and she cannot understand

What she wants or why she wanders to that undiscovered land,

For the parties there are not at all the sort of thing she planned,

    In the land where the dead dreams go.

There's a rowing man that listens, and his heart is crying out

    In the City as the sun sinks low;

For the barge, the eight, the Isis, and the coach's whoop and shout,

For the minute-gun, the counting and the long dishevelled rout,

For the howl along the tow-path and a fate that's still in doubt,

For a roughened oar to handle and a race to think about

    In the land where the dead dreams go.

There's a labourer that listens to the voices of the dead

    In the City as the sun sinks low;

And his hand begins to tremble and his face to smoulder red,

As he sees a loafer watching him and—there he turns his head

And stares into the sunset where his April love is fled,

For he hears her softly singing, and his lonely soul is led

    Through the land where the dead dreams go.

There's an old and haggard demi-rep, it's ringing in her ears,

    In the City as the sun sinks low;

With the wild and empty sorrow of the love that blights and sears,

Oh, and if she hurries onward, then be sure, be sure she hears,

Hears and bears the bitter burden of the unforgotten years,

And her laugh's a little harsher and her eyes are brimmed with tears

    For the land where the dead dreams go.

There's a barrel-organ carolling across a golden street

    In the City as the sun sinks low;

Though the music's only Verdi there's a world to make it sweet

Just as yonder yellow sunset where the earth and heaven meet

Mellows all the sooty City! Hark, a hundred thousand feet

Are marching on to glory through the poppies and the wheat

    In the land where the dead dreams go.

             So it’s Jeremiah, Jeremiah,

                  What have you to say

             When you meet the garland girls      

                  Tripping on their way?

             All around my gala hat

                  I wear a wreath of roses

             (A long and lonely year it is

                  I’ve waited for the May!)

             If any one should ask you,

                  The reason why I wear it is—

             My own love, my true love,

                   Is coming home to-day.

   And it’s buy a bunch of violets for the lady

       (It’s lilac-time in London; It’s lilac-time in London!)

   Buy a bunch of violets for the lady

       While the sky burns blue above:

   On the other side the street you’ll find it shady

       (It’s lilac-time in London! It’s lilac-time in London!)

   But buy a bunch of violets for the lady,

       And tell her she’s your own true love.

There’s a barrel-organ carolling across a golden street

    In the City as the sun sinks glittering and slow;

And the music’s not immortal; but the world has made it sweet

And enriched it with the harmonies that make a song complete

In the deeper heavens of music where the night and morning meet,

    As it dies into the sunset-glow;

And it pulses through the pleasures of the City and the pain

    That surround the singing organ like a large eternal light,

And they’ve given it a glory and a part to play again

    In the Symphony that rules the day and night.

             And there, as the music changes,

                  The song runs round again.

             Once more it turns and ranges

                  Through all its joy and pain,

             Dissects the common carnival

                  Of passions and regrets;

             And the wheeling world remembers all

                  The wheeling song forgets.

             Once more La Traviata sighs

                  Another sadder song:

             Once more II Trovatore cries

                  A tale of deeper wrong;

             Once more the knights to battle go

                  With sword and shield and lance      

             Till once, once more, the shattered foe

                  Has whirled into—a dance!

Come down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac-time, in lilac time;

    Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London!)

And you shall wander hand and hand with love in summer's wonderland;

    Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London!)

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel_organ

2. You can read the full story here:

 http://www.mvdaily.com/articles/1999/10/verdi.htm