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Poems
Alan Seeger
(1917)
Edited for the Web by Bob Blair
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- LAY me where soft Cyrene rambles down
- In grove and garden to the sapphire sea;
- Twine yellow roses for the drinker's crown;
- Let music reach and fair heads circle me,
- Watching blue ocean where the white sails steer
- Fruit-laden forth or with the wares and news
- Of merchant cities seek our harbors here,
- Careless how Corinth fares, how Syracuse;
- But here, with love and sleep in her caress,
- Warm night shall sink and utterly persuade
- The gentle doctrine Aristippus bare, -- -
- Night-winds, and one whose white youth's loveliness,
- In a flowered balcony beside me laid,
- Dreams, with the starlight on her fragrant hair.
- Alan Seeger
- 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,
- Flowerlike crept o'er with emerald aphides.
- Single he couched there, to his circling flocks
- Piping at times some happy shepherd's tune,
- Nude, with the warm wind in his golden locks,
- And arched with the blue Asian afternoon.
- Past him, gorse-purpled, to the distant coast
- Rolled the clear foothills. There his white-walled town,
- There, a blue band, the placid Euxine lay.
- Beyond, on fields of azure light embossed
- He watched from noon till dewy eve came down
- The summer clouds pile up and fade away.
- Alan Seeger
- HER eyes under their lashes were blue pools
- Fringed round with lilies; her bright hair unfurled
- Clothed her as sunshine clothes the summer world.
- Her robes were gauzes -- - gold and green and gules,
- All furry things flocked round her, from her hand
- Nibbling their foods and fawning at her feet.
- Two peacocks watched her where she made her seat
- Beside a fountain in Broceliande.
- Sometimes she sang. . . . Whoever heard forgot
- Errand and aim, and knights at noontide here,
- Riding from fabulous gestes beyond the seas,
- Would follow, tranced, and seek . . . and find her not . . .
- But wake that night, lost, by some woodland mere,
- Powdered with stars and rimmed with silent trees.
- Alan Seeger
- I LOVED illustrious cities and the crowds
- That eddy through their incandescent nights.
- I loved remote horizons with far clouds
- Girdled, and fringed about with snowy heights.
- I loved fair women, their sweet, conscious ways
- Of wearing among hands that covet and plead
- The rose ablossom at the rainbow's base
- That bounds the world's desire and all its need.
- Nature I worshipped, whose fecundity
- Embraces every vision the most fair,
- Of perfect benediction. From a boy
- I gloated on existence. Earth to me
- Seemed all-sufficient and my sojourn there
- One trembling opportunity for joy.
- Alan Seeger
- 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,
- Nor counts his greatest wealth what Beauty gives.
- But sometime on an afternoon in spring,
- When dandelions dot the fields with gold,
- And under rustling shade a few weeks old
- 'Tis sweet to stroll and hear the bluebirds sing,
- Do you, blond head, whom beauty and the power
- Of being young and winsome have prepared
- For life's last privilege that really pays,
- Make the companion of an idle hour
- These relics of the time when I too fared
- Across the sweet fifth lustrum of my days.
- Alan Seeger
- AS ONE of some fat tillage dispossessed,
- Weighing the yield of these four faded years,
- If any ask what fruit seems loveliest,
- What lasting gold among the garnered ears, -- -
- Ah, then I'll say what hours I had of thine,
- Therein I reaped Time's richest revenue,
- Read in thy text the sense of David's line,
- Through thee achieved the love that Shakespeare knew.
- Take then his book, laden with mine own love
- As flowers made sweeter by deep-drunken rain,
- That when years sunder and between us move
- Wide waters, and less kindly bonds constrain,
- Thou may'st turn here, dear boy, and reading see
- Some part of what thy friend once felt for thee.
- Alan Seeger
- BE MY companion under cool arcades
- That frame some drowsy street and dazzling square
- Beyond whose flowers and palm-tree promenades
- White belfries burn in the blue tropic air.
- Lie near me in dim forests where the croon
- Of wood-doves sounds and moss-banked water flows,
- Or musing late till the midsummer moon
- Breaks through some ruined abbey's empty rose.
- Sweetest of those to-day whose pious hands
- Tend the sequestered altar of Romance,
- Where fewer offerings burn, and fewer kneel,
- Pour there your passionate beauty on my heart,
- And, gladdening such solitudes, impart
- How sweet the fellowship of those who feel!
- Alan Seeger
- THE rooks aclamor when one enters here
- Startle the empty towers far overhead;
- Through gaping walls the summer fields appear,
- Green, tan, or, poppy-mingled, tinged with red.
- The courts where revel rang deep grass and moss
- Cover, and tangled vines have overgrown
- The gate where banners blazoned with a cross
- Rolled forth to toss round Tyre and Ascalon.
- Decay consumes it. The old causes fade.
- And fretting for the contest many a heart
- Waits their Tyrtaeus to chant on the new.
- Oh, pass him by who, in this haunted shade
- Musing enthralled, has only this much art,
- To love the things the birds and flowers love too.
- Alan Seeger
- 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 with undying Spring
- Bare bodies beautiful, brown, glistening,
- Decked with green plumes and rings of yellow gold.
- Do you suppose the herdsman sometimes hears
- Vague echoes borne beneath the moon's pale ray
- From those old, old, far-off, forgotten years?
- Who knows? Here where his ancient kings held sway
- He stands. Their names are strangers to his ears.
- Even their memory has passed away.
- Alan Seeger
- 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 a skull. But I,
- On evenings when autumnal winds have stirred
- In the porch-vines, to this gray oracle
- Have laid a wondering ear and oft-times heard,
- As from the hollow of a stranded shell,
- Old voices echoing (or my fancy erred)
- Things indistinct, but not insensible.
- Alan Seeger
- A HILLTOP sought by every soothing breeze
- That loves the melody of murmuring boughs,
- Cool shades, green acreage, and antique house
- Fronting the ocean and the dawn; than these
- Old monks built never for the spirit's ease
- Cloisters more calm -- - not Cluny nor Clairvaux;
- Sweet are the noises from the bay below,
- And cuckoos calling in the tulip-trees.
- Here, a yet empty suitor in thy train,
- Beloved Poesy, great joy was mine
- To while a listless spell of summer days,
- Happier than hoarder in each evening's gain,
- When evenings found me richer by one line,
- One verse well turned, or serviceable phrase.
- Alan Seeger
- TONIGHT a shimmer of gold lies mantled o'er
- Smooth lovely Ocean. Through the lustrous gloom
- A savor steals from linden trees in bloom
- And gardens ranged at many a palace door.
- Proud walls rise here, and, where the moonbeams pour
- Their pale enchantment down the dim coast-line,
- Terrace and lawn, trim hedge and flowering vine,
- Crown with fair culture all the sounding shore.
- How sweet, to such a place, on such a night,
- From halls with beauty and festival a-glare,
- To come distract and, stretched on the cool turf,
- Yield to some fond, improbable delight,
- While the moon, reddening, sinks, and all the air
- Sighs with the muffled tumult of the surf!
- Alan Seeger
- 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 for Righteousness
- A glorious cause to strike or perish for.
- England, which side is thine? Thou hast had sons
- Would shrink not from the choice however grim,
- Were Justice trampled on and Courage downed;
- Which will they be -- - cravens or champions?
- Oh, if a doubt intrude, remember him
- Whose death made Missolonghi holy ground.
- Alan Seeger
- I STOOD beside his sepulchre whose fame,
- Hurled over Europe once on bolt and blast,
- Now glows far off as storm-clouds overpast
- Glow in the sunset flushed with glorious flame.
- Has Nature marred his mould? Can Art acclaim
- No hero now, no man with whom men side
- As with their hearts' high needs personified?
- There are will say, One such our lips could name;
- Columbia gave him birth. Him Genius most
- Gifted to rule. Against the world's great man
- Lift their low calumny and sneering cries
- The Pharisaic multitude, the host
- Of piddling slanderers whose little eyes
- Know not what greatness is and never can.
- Alan Seeger
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