Liebestod

A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916)

I who, conceived beneath another star,

Had been a prince and played with life, instead

Have been its slave, an outcast exiled far

From the fair things my faith has merited.

My ways have been the ways that wanderers tread

And those that make romance of poverty —

Soldier, I shared the soldier’s board and bed,

And Joy has been a thing more oft to me

Whispered by summer wind and summer sea

Than known incarnate in the hours it lies

All warm against our hearts and laughs into our eyes.

I know not if in risking my best days

I shall leave utterly behind me here

This dream that lightened me through lonesome ways

And that no disappointment made less dear;

Sometimes I think that, where the hilltops rear

Their white entrenchments back of tangled wire,

Behind the mist Death only can make clear,

There, like Brunhilde ringed with flaming fire,

Lies what shall ease my heart’s immense desire:

There, where beyond the horror and the pain

Only the brave shall pass, only the strong attain.

Truth or delusion, be it as it may,

Yet think it true, dear friends, for, thinking so,

That thought shall nerve our sinews on the day

When to the last assault our bugles blow:

Reckless of pain and peril we shall go,

Heads high and hearts aflame and bayonets bare,

And we shall brave eternity as though

Eyes looked on us in which we would seem fair —

One waited in whose presence we would wear,

Even as a lover who would be well-seen,

Our manhood faultless and our honor clean.

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Poems in English 

• Robert Burns: A Stanza Added In A Mason Lodge: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: No Churchman Am I: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: I’ll Go And Be A Sodger: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Raging Fortune: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Fickle Fortune: Fragment by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Stanzas On The Same Occasion [Prospect of Death]: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns Country: O Tibbie, I Hae Seen The Day: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: In The Prospect Of Death: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: First Six Verses Of The Ninetieth Psalm Versified, The : by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Paraphrase Of The First Psalm: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Under The Pressure Of Violent Anguish: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Winter: A Dirge: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Mary Morison: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Bonie Peggy Alison: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Lass Of Cessnock Banks, The: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Here’s To Thy Health: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns Country: Ronalds Of The Bennals, The: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Handsome Nell: by Robert Burns
• Erotic comics by Hanz Kovacq, porn comic books by known illustrators – continued by Fledermaus
• Hitler, a poem about Hitler by Fledermaus

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