Alan Seeger

THERE is a power whose inspiration fills
Nature's fair fabric, sun- and star-inwrought,
Like airy dew ere any drop distils,
Like perfume in the laden flower, like aught…

To me, a pilgrim on that journey bound
Whose stations Beauty's bright examples are,
As of a silken city famed afar
Over the sands for wealth and holy ground,…

I know a village in a far-off
Where from a sunny, mountain-girdled
With tinted walls a space on either
And fed by many an olive-darkened

LAY me where soft Cyrene rambles down
In grove and garden to the sapphire sea;
Twine yellow roses for the drinker's crown;
Let music reach and fair heads circle me,…

Stretched on a sunny bank he lay at rest,
Ferns at his elbow, lilies round his knees,
With sweet flesh patterned where the cool turf pressed,
Flowerlike crept o'er with emerald aphides.…

I have sought Happiness, but it has been A lovely rainbow, baffling all pursuit,
And tasted Pleasure, but it was a fruit More fair of outward hue than sweet within.
Renouncing both, a flake in the ferment Of battling hosts that conquer…

Be my companion under cool arcades
That frame some drowsy street and dazzling square
Beyond whose flowers and palm-tree promenades
White belfries burn in the blue tropic air.…

Do you remember once, in Paris of glad faces,
The night we wandered off under the third moon's rays And, leaving far behind bright streets and busy places,
Stood where the Seine flowed down between its quiet quais?
The city's voice…

A paraphrase of Petrarca, Quando fra l'altre donne...WHEN among creatures fair of countenance
Love comes enformed in such proud character,
So far as other beauty yields to her,
So far the breast with fiercer longing pants;…

Sidney, in whom the heyday of romance
Came to its precious and most perfect flower,
Whether you tourneyed with victorious lance
Or brought sweet roundelays to Stella's bower,…

The rooks aclamor when one enters here
Startle the empty towers far overhead;
Through gaping walls the summer fields appear,
Green, tan, or, poppy-mingled, tinged with red.…

I have gone sometimes by the gates of Death And stood beside the cavern through whose doors Enter the voyagers into the unseen.
From that dread threshold only, gazing back,
Have eyes in swift illumination seen Life utterly revealed, and…

A hilltop sought by every soothing breeze
That loves the melody of murmuring boughs,
Cool shades, green acreage, and antique house
Fronting the ocean and the dawn; than these…

Give me the treble of thy horns and hoofs,
The ponderous undertones of 'bus and tram,
A garret and a glimpse across the roofs
Of clouds blown eastward over Notre Dame,…

In the glad revels, in the happy fetes,
When cheeks are flushed, and glasses gilt and pearled With the sweet wine of France that concentrates The sunshine and the beauty of the world,
Drink sometimes, you whose footsteps yet may tread…

Tonight a shimmer of gold lies mantled o'er
Smooth lovely Ocean. Through the lustrous gloom
A savor steals from linden trees in bloom
And gardens ranged at many a palace door.…

A shell surprised our post one day
And killed a comrade at my side.
My heart was sick to see the way
He suffered as he died.

OH, YOU are more desirable to me
Than all I staked in an impulsive hour,
Making my youth the sport of chance, to be
Blighted or torn in its most perfect flower;…

So when the verdure of his life was shed,
With all the grace of ripened manlihead,
And on his locks, but now so lovable,
Old age like desolating winter fell,

Her courts are by the flux of flaming ways,
Between the rivers and the illumined sky Whose fervid depths reverberate from on high Fierce lustres mingled in a fiery haze.
They mark it inland; blithe and fair of face Her suitors follow,…

WHY should you be astonished that my heart,
Plunged for so long in darkness and in dearth,
Should be revived by you, and stir and start
As by warm April now, reviving Earth?…

I stood beside his sepulchre whose fame,
Hurled over Europe once on bolt and blast,
Now glows far off as storm-clouds overpast
Glow in the sunset flushed with glorious flame.…

Однажды смерть назначит мне свиданье
Там, на ничейной и глухой земле,
Когда весна прошелестит во мгле,
Наполнит воздух яблоневый цвет.…

Thy petals yet are closely curled,
Rose of the world,
Around their scented, golden core;
Nor yet has Summer purpled o'er Thy tender clusters that begin To swell within The dewy vine-leaves' early screen Of sheltering green.