To England At The Outbreak Of The Balkan War
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) A cloud has lowered that shall not soon pass o’er. The world takes sides: whether for impious aims With Tyranny whose bloody toll enflames A generous people to heroic war; Whether with Freedom, stretched in her own gore, Whose pleading hands and suppliant distress Still offer hearts that thirst […]
Tithonus
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) 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, Leaving them white and flowerless and forlorn: Then from his bed the Goddess of the Morn Softly withheld, yet […]
The Wanderer
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) To see the clouds his spirit yearned toward so Over new mountains piled and unploughed waves, Back of old-storied spires and architraves To watch Arcturus rise or Fomalhaut, And roused by street-cries in strange tongues when day Flooded with gold some domed metropolis, Between new towers to waken […]
The Torture Of Cuauhtemoc
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) Their strength had fed on this when Death’s white arms Came sleeved in vapors and miasmal dew, Curling across the jungle’s ferny floor, Becking each fevered brain. On bleak divides, Where Sleep grew niggardly for nipping cold That twinged blue lips into a mouthed curse, Not back to Seville […]
The Sultans Palace
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) My spirit only lived to look on Beauty’s face, As only when they clasp the arms seem served aright; As in their flesh inheres the impulse to embrace, To gaze on Loveliness was my soul’s appetite. I have roamed far in search; white road and plunging bow Were […]
The Rendezvous
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) He faints with hope and fear. It is the hour. Distant, across the thundering organ-swell, In sweet discord from the cathedral-tower, Fall the faint chimes and the thrice-sequent bell. Over the crowd his eye uneasy roves. He sees a plume, a fur; his heart dilates — Soars . . […]
The Old Lowe House Staten Island
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) Another prospect pleased the builder’s eye, And Fashion tenanted (where Fashion wanes) Here in the sorrowful suburban lanes When first these gables rose against the sky. Relic of a romantic taste gone by, This stately monument alone remains, Vacant, with lichened walls and window-panes Blank as the windows of […]
The Nympholept
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) There was a boy — not above childish fears — With steps that faltered now and straining ears, Timid, irresolute, yet dauntless still, Who one bright dawn, when each remotest hill Stood sharp and clear in Heaven’s unclouded blue And all Earth shimmered with fresh-beaded dew, Risen in the […]
The Need To Love
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) The need to love that all the stars obey Entered my heart and banished all beside. Bare were the gardens where I used to stray; Faded the flowers that one time satisfied. Before the beauty of the west on fire, The moonlit hills from cloister-casements viewed Cloud-like arose […]
The Hosts
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) Purged, with the life they left, of all That makes life paltry and mean and small, In their new dedication charged With something heightened, enriched, enlarged, That lends a light to their lusty brows And a song to the rhythm of their tramping feet, These are the men that […]
The Deserted Garden
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) I know a village in a far-off land Where from a sunny, mountain-girdled plain With tinted walls a space on either hand And fed by many an olive-darkened lane The high-road mounts, and thence a silver band Through vineyard slopes above and rolling grain, Winds off to that dim […]
The Bayadere
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) Flaked, drifting clouds hide not the full moon’s rays More than her beautiful bright limbs were hid By the light veils they burned and blushed amid, Skilled to provoke in soft, lascivious ways, And there was invitation in her voice And laughing lips and wonderful dark eyes, As though […]
The Aisne
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) We first saw fire on the tragic slopes Where the flood-tide of France’s early gain, Big with wrecked promise and abandoned hopes, Broke in a surf of blood along the Aisne. The charge her heroes left us, we assumed, What, dying, they reconquered, we preserved, In the chill […]
Tezcotzinco
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) Though thou art now a ruin bare and cold, Thou wert sometime the garden of a king. The birds have sought a lovelier place to sing. The flowers are few. It was not so of old. It was not thus when hand in hand there strolled Through arbors perfumed […]
Sonnet Xvi Who Shall Invoke Her
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) Who shall invoke her, who shall be her priest, With single rites the common debt to pay? On some green headland fronting to the East Our fairest boy shall kneel at break of day. Naked, uplifting in a laden tray New milk and honey and sweet-tinctured wine, Not without […]
Sonnet Xv
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) Above the ruin of God’s holy place, Where man-forsaken lay the bleeding rood, Whose hands, when men had craved substantial food, Gave not, nor folded when they cried, Embrace, I saw exalted in the latter days Her whom west winds with natal foam bedewed, Wafted toward Cyprus, lily-breasted, nude, […]
Sonnet Xiv
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) IT may be for the world of weeds and tares And dearth in Nature of sweet Beauty’s rose That oft as Fortune from ten thousand shows One from the train of Love’s true courtiers Straightway on him who gazes, unawares, Deep wonder seizes and swift trembling grows, Reft by […]
Sonnet Xiii
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) I fancied, while you stood conversing there, Superb, in every attitude a queen, Her ermine thus Boadicea bare, So moved amid the multitude Faustine. My life, whose whole religion Beauty is, Be charged with sin if ever before yours A lesser feeling crossed my mind than his Who owning […]
Sonnet Xii
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) Like as a dryad, from her native bole Coming at dusk, when the dim stars emerge, To a slow river at whose silent verge Tall poplars tremble and deep grasses roll, Come thou no less and, kneeling in a shoal Of the freaked flag and meadow buttercup, Bend till […]
Sonnet Xi
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) 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; I bless the spot, and hour, and circumstance, That wed desire to a thing so high, And say, Glad soul, […]
Sonnet X
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) A splendor, flamelike, born to be pursued, With palms extent for amorous charity And eyes incensed with love for all they see, A wonder more to be adored than wooed, On whom the grace of conscious womanhood Adorning every little thing she does Sits like enchantment, making glorious A […]
Sonnet Viii
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) Oft as by chance, a little while apart The pall of empty, loveless hours withdrawn, Sweet Beauty, opening on the impoverished heart, Beams like the jewel on the breast of dawn: Not though high heaven should rend would deeper awe Fill me than penetrates my spirit thus, Nor all […]
Sonnet Vii
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) 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, Came the report of one — a woman crowned With all perfection, blemishless and high, As the full moon amid […]
Sonnet Vi
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) 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, The glad-eyed streets and radiant gatherings Where I drank deep the bliss of being young, The strife and […]
Sonnet V
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) A tide of beauty with returning May Floods the fair city; from warm pavements fume Odors endeared; down avenues in bloom The chestnut-trees with phallic spires are gay. Over the terrace flows the thronged cafe; The boulevards are streams of hurrying sound; And through the streets, like veins when […]
Sonnet Ix
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) Amid the florid multitude her face Was like the full moon seen behind the lace Of orchard boughs where clouded blossoms part When Spring shines in the world and in the heart. As the full-moon-beams to the ferny floor Of summer woods through flower and foliage pour, So to […]
Sonnet Iv
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) Up at his attic sill the South wind came And days of sun and storm but never peace. Along the town’s tumultuous arteries He heard the heart-throbs of a sentient frame: Each night the whistles in the bay, the same Whirl of incessant wheels and clanging cars: For smoke […]
Sonnet Iii
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) There was a youth around whose early way White angels hung in converse and sweet choir, Teaching in summer clouds his thought to stray, — In cloud and far horizon to desire. His life was nursed in beauty, like the stream Born of clear showers and the mountain dew, […]
Sonnet Ii
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) 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, guessing by the glare Beyond the hilltops […]
Sonnet I
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) Down the strait vistas where a city street Fades in pale dust and vaporous distances, Stained with far fumes the light grows less and less And the sky reddens round the day’s retreat. Now out of orient chambers, cool and sweet, Like Nature’s pure lustration, Dusk comes down. Now […]
Sonnet 12
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) Clouds rosy-tinted in the setting sun, Depths of the azure eastern sky between, Plains where the poplar-bordered highways run, Patched with a hundred tints of brown and green, — Beauty of Earth, when in thy harmonies The cannon’s note has ceased to be a part, I shall return once […]
Sonnet 11
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) Apart sweet women (for whom Heaven be blessed), Comrades, you cannot think how thin and blue Look the leftovers of mankind that rest, Now that the cream has been skimmed off in you. War has its horrors, but has this of good — That its sure processes sort out […]
Sonnet 10
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) 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 or recoil, There only, chastened by fatigue […]
Sonnet 08
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) Oh, love of woman, you are known to be A passion sent to plague the hearts of men; For every one you bring felicity Bringing rebuffs and wretchedness to ten. I have been oft where human life sold cheap And seen men’s brains spilled out about their ears And […]
Sonnet 07
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) There have been times when I could storm and plead, But you shall never hear me supplicate. These long months that have magnified my need Have made my asking less importunate, For now small favors seem to me so great That not the courteous lovers of old time Were […]
Sonnet 06
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) 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; For I think less of what that chance may bring Than how, before returning into fire, To […]
Sonnet 05
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) Seeing you have not come with me, nor spent This day’s suggestive beauty as we ought, I have gone forth alone and been content To make you mistress only of my thought. And I have blessed the fate that was so kind In my life’s agitations to include This […]
Sonnet 04
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) If I was drawn here from a distant place, ‘Twas not to pray nor hear our friend’s address, But, gazing once more on your winsome face, To worship there Ideal Loveliness. On that pure shrine that has too long ignored The gifts that once I brought so frequently I […]
Sonnet 03
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) 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 am the field of undulating grass And you the gentle perfumed breath of Spring, And […]
Sonnet 02
A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) Not that I always struck the proper mean Of what mankind must give for what they gain, But, when I think of those whom dull routine And the pursuit of cheerless toil enchain, Who from their desk-chairs seeing a summer cloud Race through blue heaven on its joyful course […]