Alan Seeger

You have the grit and the guts, I know; You are ready to answer blow for blow You are virile, combative, stubborn, hard,

The lad I was I longer now Nor am nor shall be evermore. Spring's lovely blossoms from my brow

All that's not love is the dearth of my days, The leaves of the volume with rubric unwrit, The temple in times without prayer, without praise,

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

There is a power whose inspiration fills Nature's fair fabric, sun- and star-inwrought, Like airy dew ere any drop distils,

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,

I stood beside his sepulchre whose fame, Hurled over Europe once on bolt and blast, Now glows far off as storm-clouds overpast

I Deep in the sloping forest that surrounds The head of a green valley that I know,

Broceliande! in the perilous beauty of silence and menacing shade, Thou art set on the shores of the sea down the haze of horizons untravelled, unscanned.

In the glad revels, in the happy fêtes, When cheeks are flushed, and glasses gilt and pearled With the sweet wine of France that concentrates

The rooks aclamor when one enters here Startle the empty towers far overhead; Through gaping walls the summer fields appear,

I Do you remember once, in Paris of glad faces, The night we wandered off under the third moon's rays

Over the radiant ridges borne out on the offshore wind, I have sailed as a butterfly sails whose priming wings unfurled Leave the familiar gardens and visited fields behind

O happiness, I know not what far seas, Blue hills and deep, thy sunny realms surround, That thus in Music's wistful harmonies

In that fair capital where Pleasure, crowned Amidst her myriad courtiers, riots and rules, I too have been a suitor. Radiant eyes

There was a time when I thought much of Fame, And laid the golden edifice to be That in the clear light of eternity

For there were nights . . . my love to him whose brow Has glistened with the spoils of nights like those, Home turning as a conqueror turns home,

What is Success? Out of the endless ore Of deep desire to coin the utmost gold Of passionate memory; to have lived so well

I have a rendezvous with Death At some disputed barricade, When Spring comes back with rustling shade

I loved illustrious cities and the crowds That eddy through their incandescent nights. I loved remote horizons with far clouds

I have gone sometimes by the gates of Death And stood beside the cavern through whose doors Enter the voyagers into the unseen.

Lay me where soft Cyrene rambles down In grove and garden to the sapphire sea; Twine yellow roses for the drinker's crown;

Oft when sweet music undulated round, Like the full moon out of a perfumed sea Thine image from the waves of blissful sound

I who, conceived beneath another star, Had been a prince and played with life, instead Have been its slave, an outcast exiled far

In Lyonesse was beauty enough, men say: Long Summer loaded the orchards to excess, And fertile lowlands lengthening far away,

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

(To have been read before the statue of Lafayette and Washington in Paris, on Decoration Day, May 30, 1916)

Thy petals yet are closely curled, Rose of the world, Around their scented, golden core;

Tonight a shimmer of gold lies mantled o'er Smooth lovely Ocean. Through the lustrous gloom A savor steals from linden trees in bloom

A hilltop sought by every soothing breeze That loves the melody of murmuring boughs, Cool shades, green acreage, and antique house

I First, London, for its myriads; for its height, Manhattan heaped in towering stalagmite;

Exiled afar from youth and happy love, If Death should ravish my fond spirit hence I have no doubt but, like a homing dove,

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

Sidney, in whom the heyday of romance Came to its precious and most perfect flower, Whether you tourneyed with victorious lance

Her courts are by the flux of flaming ways, Between the rivers and the illumined sky Whose fervid depths reverberate from on high

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

There was a youth around whose early way White angels hung in converse and sweet choir, Teaching in summer clouds his thought to stray, -

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

Up at his attic sill the South wind came And days of sun and storm but never peace. Along the town's tumultuous arteries

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,

Well, seeing I have no hope, then let us part; Having long taught my flesh to master fear, I should have learned by now to rule my heart,

Amid the florid multitude her face Was like the full moon seen behind the lace Of orchard boughs where clouded blossoms part

A tide of beauty with returning May Floods the fair city; from warm pavements fume Odors endeared; down avenues in bloom

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

Oh, you are more desirable to me Than all I staked in an impulsive hour, Making my youth the sport of chance, to be

Give me the treble of thy horns and hoofs, The ponderous undertones of 'bus and tram, A garret and a glimpse across the roofs

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

To me, a pilgrim on that journey bound Whose stations Beauty's bright examples are, As of a silken city famed afar

Oh, love of woman, you are known to be A passion sent to plague the hearts of men; For every one you bring felicity

Oft as by chance, a little while apart The pall of empty, loveless hours withdrawn, Sweet Beauty, opening on the impoverished heart,

A splendor, flamelike, born to be pursued, With palms extent for amorous charity And eyes incensed with love for all they see,

I have sought Happiness, but it has been A lovely rainbow, baffling all pursuit, And tasted Pleasure, but it was a fruit

* A paraphrase of Petrarca, 'Quando fra l'altre donne . . .' When among creatures fair of countenance Love comes enformed in such proud character,

Apart sweet women (for whom Heaven be blessed), Comrades, you cannot think how thin and blue Look the leftovers of mankind that rest,

Clouds rosy-tinted in the setting sun, Depths of the azure eastern sky between, Plains where the poplar-bordered highways run,

Like as a dryad, from her native bole Coming at dusk, when the dim stars emerge, To a slow river at whose silent verge

I fancied, while you stood conversing there, Superb, in every attitude a queen, Her ermine thus Boadicea bare,

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

Above the ruin of God's holy place, Where man-forsaken lay the bleeding rood, Whose hands, when men had craved substantial food,

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

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.

We first saw fire on the tragic slopes Where the flood-tide of France's early gain, Big with wrecked promise and abandoned hopes,

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,

I know a village in a far-off land Where from a sunny, mountain-girdled plain With tinted walls a space on either hand

Purged, with the life they left, of all That makes life paltry and mean and small, In their new dedication charged

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;

There was a boy - not above childish fears - With steps that faltered now and straining ears, Timid, irresolute, yet dauntless still,

Another prospect pleased the builder's eye, And Fashion tenanted (where Fashion wanes) Here in the sorrowful suburban lanes

He faints with hope and fear. It is the hour. Distant, across the thundering organ-swell, In sweet discord from the cathedral-tower,

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,

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,

To see the clouds his spirit yearned toward so Over new mountains piled and unploughed waves, Back of old-storied spires and architraves

So when the verdure of his life was shed, With all the grace of ripened manlihead, And on his locks, but now so lovable,

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

Ruggiero, to amaze the British host, And wake more wonder in their wondering ranks, The bridle of his winged courser loosed,

Florence, rejoice! For thou o'er land and sea So spread'st thy pinions that the fame of thee Hath reached no less into the depths of Hell.

I care not that one listen if he lives For aught but life's romance, nor puts above All life's necessities the need to love,

Her eyes under their lashes were blue pools Fringed round with lilies; her bright hair unfurled Clothed her as sunshine clothes the summer world.

As one of some fat tillage dispossessed, Weighing the yield of these four faded years, If any ask what fruit seems loveliest,

Be my companion under cool arcades That frame some drowsy street and dazzling square Beyond whose flowers and palm-tree promenades