A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916)
At dusk, when lowlands where dark waters glide
Robe in gray mist, and through the greening hills
The hoot-owl calls his mate, and whippoorwills
Clamor from every copse and orchard-side,
I watched the red star rising in the East,
And while his fellows of the flaming sign
From prisoning daylight more and more released,
Lift their pale lamps, and, climbing higher, higher,
Out of their locks the waters of the Line
Shaking in clouds of phosphorescent fire,
Rose in the splendor of their curving flight,
Their dolphin leap across the austral night,
From windows southward opening on the sea
What eyes, I wondered, might be watching, too,
Orbed in some blossom-laden balcony.
Where, from the garden to the rail above,
As though a lover’s greeting to his love
Should borrow body and form and hue
And tower in torrents of floral flame,
The crimson bougainvillea grew,
What starlit brow uplifted to the same
Majestic regress of the summering sky,
What ultimate thing — hushed, holy, throned as high
Above the currents that tarnish and profane
As silver summits are whose pure repose
No curious eyes disclose
Nor any footfalls stain,
But round their beauty on azure evenings
Only the oreads go on gauzy wings,
Only the oreads troop with dance and song
And airy beings in rainbow mists who throng
Out of those wonderful worlds that lie afar
Betwixt the outmost cloud and the nearest star.
Like the moon, sanguine in the orient night
Shines the red flower in her beautiful hair.
Her breasts are distant islands of delight
Upon a sea where all is soft and fair.
Those robes that make a silken sheath
For each lithe attitude that flows beneath,
Shrouding in scented folds sweet warmths and tumid flowers,
Call them far clouds that half emerge
Beyond a sunset ocean’s utmost verge,
Hiding in purple shade and downpour of soft showers
Enchanted isles by mortal foot untrod,
And there in humid dells resplendent orchids nod;
There always from serene horizons blow
Soul-easing gales and there all spice-trees grow
That Phoenix robbed to line his fragrant nest
Each hundred years in Araby the Blest.
Star of the South that now through orient mist
At nightfall off Tampico or Belize
Greetest the sailor rising from those seas
Where first in me, a fond romanticist,
The tropic sunset’s bloom on cloudy piles
Cast out industrious cares with dreams of fabulous isles —
Thou lamp of the swart lover to his tryst,
O’er planted acres at the jungle’s rim
Reeking with orange-flower and tuberose,
Dear to his eyes thy ruddy splendor glows
Among the palms where beauty waits for him;
Bliss too thou bringst to our greening North,
Red scintillant through cherry-blossom rifts,
Herald of summer-heat, and all the gifts
And all the joys a summer can bring forth —-
Be thou my star, for I have made my aim
To follow loveliness till autumn-strown
Sunder the sinews of this flower-like frame
As rose-leaves sunder when the bud is blown.
Ay, sooner spirit and sense disintegrate
Than reconcilement to a common fate
Strip the enchantment from a world so dressed
In hues of high romance. I cannot rest
While aught of beauty in any path untrod
Swells into bloom and spreads sweet charms abroad
Unworshipped of my love. I cannot see
In Life’s profusion and passionate brevity
How hearts enamored of life can strain too much
In one long tension to hear, to see, to touch.
Now on each rustling night-wind from the South
Far music calls; beyond the harbor mouth
Each outbound argosy with sail unfurled
May point the path through this fortuitous world
That holds the heart from its desire. Away!
Where tinted coast-towns gleam at close of day,
Where squares are sweet with bells, or shores thick set
With bloom and bower, with mosque and minaret.
Blue peaks loom up beyond the coast-plains here,
White roads wind up the dales and disappear,
By silvery waters in the plains afar
Glimmers the inland city like a star,
With gilded gates and sunny spires ablaze
And burnished domes half-seen through luminous haze,
Lo, with what opportunity Earth teems!
How like a fair its ample beauty seems!
Fluttering with flags its proud pavilions rise:
What bright bazaars, what marvelous merchandise,
Down seething alleys what melodious din,
What clamor importuning from every booth!
At Earth’s great market where Joy is trafficked in
Buy while thy purse yet swells with golden Youth!
A few random poems:
- Snowbanks North of the House by Robert Bly
- The Carpenter’s Son by Sara Teasdale
- Владимир Высоцкий – Не писать стихов мне и романов
- Владимир Луговской – Остролистник
- The Story Of Our Lives by Mark Strand
- A character of it’s own by Sylvan Lightbourne
- Mother’s Day, 1993 by Todd H. C. Fischer
- The Munich Mannequins by Sylvia Plath
- And because Love battles by Pablo Neruda
- Низами Гянджеви – Лица серебряный овал в сиянье покажи
- The Magic Wand
- Robert Burns: Inscribed On A Work Of Hannah More’s: Presented to the Author by a Lady.
- Mild is the Parting Year by Walter Savage Landor
- Insolent Storm Strikes At The Skull by Sylvia Plath
- The Detective by Sylvia Plath
External links
Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus
Talking Writing Monster’s Page –
Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh
Poems in English
- English Poetry. Philip James Bailey. Festus – 41. Филип Джеймс Бэйли.
- English Poetry. Philip James Bailey. Festus – 44. Филип Джеймс Бэйли.
- English Poetry. Ella Wheeler Wilcox. The Blasphemy of Guns. Элла Уилкокс.
- English Poetry. Algernon Charles Swinburne. The Triumph of Time. Алджернон Чарльз Суинбёрн.
- English Poetry. William Barnes. Second Collection. The Heäre. Уильям Барнс.
- English Poetry. Isaac Watts. Hymn 2. Исаак Уоттс.
- English Poetry. Henry Livingston. To the Memory of Sarah Livingston. Генри Ливингстон.
- English Poetry. Edna St. Vincent Millay. Assault. Эдна Сент-Винсент Миллей.
- English Poetry. Lucy Maud Montgomery. As the Heart Hopes. Люси Мод Монтгомери.
- English Poetry. Rupert Chawner Brooke. In Examination. Руперт Брук.
- English Poetry. Percy Bysshe Shelley. Satan Broken Loose. Перси Биши Шелли. Тень Ада
- English Poetry. David Herbert Lawrence. Whales Weep Not!. Дэвид Герберт Лоуренс.
- English Poetry. Thomas Aird. The Devil’s Dream on Mount Aksbeck. Томас Эрд.
- English Poetry. George Eliot. How Lisa Loved the King. Джордж Элиот.
- English Poetry. Charles Lockhart. Epistle to a Friend, with a Copy of Burns’s Letters. Чарльз Локкарт. Послание другу при возвращении ему томиков стихов Бернса
- English Poetry. Charles Wesley. Hark! A Voice Divides the Sky. Чарльз Уэсли.
- English Poetry. Robert William Service. My Room. Роберт Уильям Сервис.
- English Poetry. John Townsend Trowbridge. Midwinter. Джон Таунсенд Троубридж.
- English Poetry. Robert William Service. Dark Glasses. Роберт Уильям Сервис.
- English Poetry. Robert William Service. Dark Glasses. Роберт Уильям Сервис.
More external links (open in a new tab):
Doska or the Board – write anything
Search engines:
Yandex – the best search engine for searches in Russian (and the best overall image search engine, in any language, anywhere)
Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.
Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees
Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.
Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.
Parallel Translations of Poetry
The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works
Alan Seeger (1888-1916) was an American war poet who fought and died in World War I during the Battle of the Somme, serving in the French Foreign Legion. Seeger was the brother of Charles Seeger, a noted American pacifist and musicologist and the uncle of folk musician, Pete Seeger.