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 above the gates of Paradise

Fair verses bade, Be welcome and rejoice!

O’er rugs where mottled blue and green and red

Blent in the patterns of the Orient loom,

Like a bright butterfly from bloom to bloom,

She floated with delicious arms outspread.

There was no pose she took, no move she made,

But all the feverous, love-envenomed flesh

Wrapped round as in the gladiator’s mesh

And smote as with his triple-forked blade.

I thought that round her sinuous beauty curled

Fierce exhalations of hot human love, —

Around her beauty valuable above

The sunny outspread kingdoms of the world;

Flowing as ever like a dancing fire

Flowed her belled ankles and bejewelled wrists,

Around her beauty swept like sanguine mists

The nimbus of a thousand hearts’ desire.

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Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus

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Poems in English 

• La Nue by Alan Seeger
• Kyrenaikos by Alan Seeger
• Juvenilia An Ode To Natural Beauty by Alan Seeger
• I Loved by Alan Seeger
• I Have A Rendezvous With Death by Alan Seeger
• Fragments by Alan Seeger
• Eudaemon by Alan Seeger
• El Extraviado by Alan Seeger
• Do You Remember Once by Alan Seeger
• Coucy by Alan Seeger
• Champagne 1914 15 by Alan Seeger
• Broceliande by Alan Seeger
• Bellinglise by Alan Seeger
• At The Tomb Of Napoleon by Alan Seeger
• Ariosto Orlando Furioso Canto X 91 99 by Alan Seeger
• Antinous by Alan Seeger
• An Ode To Antares by Alan Seeger
• All Thats Not Love by Alan Seeger
• After An Epigram Of Clement Marot by Alan Seeger
• A Message To America by Alan Seeger

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Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.

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