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Poems
Alan Seeger
(1917)
Edited for the Web by Bob Blair
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- 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 trenches, harried, shelled, entombed,
- Winter came down on us, but no man swerved.
- Winter came down on us. The low clouds, torn
- In the stark branches of the riven pines,
- Blurred the white rockets that from dusk till morn
- Traced the wide curve of the close-grappling lines.
- In rain, and fog that on the withered hill
- Froze before dawn, the lurking foe drew down;
- Or light snows fell that made forlorner still
- The ravaged country and the ruined town;
- Or the long clouds would end. Intensely fair,
- The winter constellations blazing forth -- -
- Perseus, the Twins, Orion, the Great Bear -- -
- Gleamed on our bayonets pointing to the north.
- And the lone sentinel would start and soar
- On wings of strong emotion as he knew
- That kinship with the stars that only War
- Is great enough to lift man's spirit to.
- And ever down the curving front, aglow
- With the pale rockets' intermittent light,
- He heard, like distant thunder, growl and grow
- The rumble of far battles in the night, -- -
- Rumors, reverberant, indistinct, remote,
- Borne from red fields whose martial names have won
- The power to thrill like a far trumpet-note, -- -
- Vic, Vailly, Soupir, Hurtelise, Craonne . . .
- Craonne, before thy cannon-swept plateau,
- Where like sere leaves lay strewn September's dead,
- I found for all dear things I forfeited
- A recompense I would not now forego.
- For that high fellowship was ours then
- With those who, championing another's good,
- More than dull Peace or its poor votaries could,
- Taught us the dignity of being men.
- There we drained deeper the deep cup of life,
- And on sublimer summits came to learn,
- After soft things, the terrible and stern,
- After sweet Love, the majesty of Strife;
- There where we faced under those frowning heights
- The blast that maims, the hurricane that kills;
- There where the watchlights on the winter hills
- Flickered like balefire through inclement nights;
- There where, firm links in the unyielding chain,
- Where fell the long-planned blow and fell in vain -- -
- Hearts worthy of the honor and the trial,
- We helped to hold the lines along the Aisne.
- Alan Seeger

- IN THE glad revels, in the happy fetes,
- When cheeks are flushed, and glasses gilt and pearled
- With the sweet wine of France that concentrates
- The sunshine and the beauty of the world,
- Drink sometimes, you whose footsteps yet may tread
- The undisturbed, delightful paths of Earth,
- To those whose blood, in pious duty shed,
- Hallows the soil where that same wine had birth.
- Here, by devoted comrades laid away,
- Along our lines they slumber where they fell,
- Beside the crater at the Ferme d'Alger
- And up the bloody slopes of La Pompelle,
- And round the city whose cathedral towers
- The enemies of Beauty dared profane,
- And in the mat of multicolored flowers
- That clothe the sunny chalk-fields of Champagne.
- Under the little crosses where they rise
- The soldier rests. Now round him undismayed
- The cannon thunders, and at night he lies
- At peace beneath the eternal fusillade. . . .
- That other generations might possess -- -
- From shame and menace free in years to come -- -
- A richer heritage of happiness,
- He marched to that heroic martyrdom.
- Esteeming less the forfeit that he paid
- Than undishonored that his flag might float
- Over the towers of liberty, he made
- His breast the bulwark and his blood the moat.
- Obscurely sacrificed, his nameless tomb,
- Bare of the sculptor's art, the poet's lines,
- Summer shall flush with poppy-fields in bloom,
- And Autumn yellow with maturing vines.
- There the grape-pickers at their harvesting
- Shall lightly tread and load their wicker trays,
- Blessing his memory as they toil and sing
- In the slant sunshine of October days. . . .
- I love to think that if my blood should be
- So privileged to sink where his has sunk,
- I shall not pass from Earth entirely,
- But when the banquet rings, when healths are drunk,
- And faces that the joys of living fill
- Glow radiant with laughter and good cheer,
- In beaming cups some spark of me shall still
- Brim toward the lips that once I held so dear.
- So shall one coveting no higher plane
- Than nature clothes in color and flesh and tone,
- Even from the grave put upward to attain
- The dreams youth cherished and missed and might have known;
- And that strong need that strove unsatisfied
- Toward earthly beauty in all forms it wore,
- Not death itself shall utterly divide
- From the beloved shapes it thirsted for.
- Alas, how many an adept for whose arms
- Life held delicious offerings perished here,
- How many in the prime of all that charms,
- Crowned with all gifts that conquer and endear!
- Honor them not so much with tears and flowers,
- But you with whom the sweet fulfilment lies,
- Where in the anguish of atrocious hours
- Turned their last thoughts and closed their dying eyes,
- Rather when music on bright gatherings lays
- Its tender spell, and joy is uppermost,
- Be mindful of the men they were, and raise
- Your glasses to them in one silent toast.
- Drink to them -- - amorous of dear Earth as well,
- They asked no tribute lovelier than this -- -
- And in the wine that ripened where they fell,
- Oh, frame your lips as though it were a kiss.
- Alan Seeger, Champagne, France, July, 1915.

- 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 have taken vows,
- These are the hardy, the flower, the elite, -- -
- These are the men that are moved no more
- By the will to traffic and grasp and store
- And ring with pleasure and wealth and love
- The circles that self is the center of;
- But they are moved by the powers that force
- The sea forever to ebb and rise,
- That hold Arcturus in his course,
- And marshal at noon in tropic skies
- The clouds that tower on some snow-capped chain
- And drift out over the peopled plain.
- They are big with the beauty of cosmic things.
- Mark how their columns surge! They seem
- To follow the goddess with outspread wings
- That points toward Glory, the soldier's dream.
- With bayonets bare and flags unfurled,
- They scale the summits of the world
- And fade on the farthest golden height
- In fair horizons full of light.
- Comrades in arms there -- - friend or foe -- -
- That trod the perilous, toilsome trail
- Through a world of ruin and blood and woe
- In the years of the great decision -- - hail!
- Friend or foe, it shall matter nought;
- This only matters, in fine: we fought.
- For we were young and in love or strife
- Sought exultation and craved excess:
- To sound the wildest debauch in life
- We staked our youth and its loveliness.
- Let idlers argue the right and wrong
- And weigh what merit our causes had.
- Putting our faith in being strong -- -
- Above the level of good and bad -- -
- For us, we battled and burned and killed
- Because evolving Nature willed,
- And it was our pride and boast to be
- The instruments of Destiny.
- There was a stately drama writ
- By the hand that peopled the earth and air
- And set the stars in the infinite
- And made night gorgeous and morning fair,
- And all that had sense to reason knew
- That bloody drama must be gone through.
- Some sat and watched how the action veered -- -
- Waited, profited, trembled, cheered -- -
- We saw not clearly nor understood,
- But yielding ourselves to the masterhand,
- Each in his part as best he could,
- We played it through as the author planned.
- Alan Seeger

- A SHELL surprised our post one day
- And killed a comrade at my side.
- My heart was sick to see the way
- He suffered as he died.
- I dug about the place he fell,
- And found, no bigger than my thumb,
- A fragment of the splintered shell
- In warm aluminum.
- I melted it, and made a mould,
- And poured it in the opening,
- And worked it, when the cast was cold,
- Into a shapely ring.
- And when my ring was smooth and bright,
- Holding it on a rounded stick,
- For seal, I bade a Turco write
- Maktoob in Arabic.
- Maktoob! "'Tis written!" . . . So they think,
- These children of the desert, who
- From its immense expanses drink
- Some of its grandeur too.
- Within the book of Destiny,
- Whose leaves are time, whose cover, space,
- The day when you shall cease to be,
- The hour, the mode, the place,
- Are marked, they say; and you shall not
- By taking thought or using wit
- Alter that certain fate one jot,
- Postpone or conjure it.
- Learn to drive fear, then, from your heart.
- If you must perish, know, O man,
- 'Tis an inevitable part
- Of the predestined plan.
- And, seeing that through the ebon door
- Once only you may pass, and meet
- Of those that have gone through before
- The mighty, the elite -- ---
- Guard that not bowed nor blanched with fear
- You enter, but serene, erect,
- As you would wish most to appear
- To those you most respect.
- So die as though your funeral
- Ushered you through the doors that led
- Into a stately banquet hall
- Where heroes banqueted;
- And it shall all depend therein
- Whether you come as slave or lord,
- If they acclaim you as their kin
- Or spurn you from their board.
- So, when the order comes: "Attack!"
- And the assaulting wave deploys,
- And the heart trembles to look back
- On life and all its joys;
- Or in a ditch that they seem near
- To find, and round your shallow trough
- Drop the big shells that you can hear
- Coming a half mile off;
- When, not to hear, some try to talk,
- And some to clean their guns, or sing,
- And some dig deeper in the chalk -- -
- I look upon my ring:
- And nerves relax that were most tense,
- And Death comes whistling down unheard,
- As I consider all the sense
- Held in that mystic word.
- And it brings, quieting like balm
- My heart whose flutterings have ceased,
- The resignation and the calm
- And wisdom of the East.
- Alan Seeger

- I HAVE a rendezvous with Death
- At some disputed barricade,
- When Spring comes back with rustling shade
- And apple-blossoms fill the air -- -
- I have a rendezvous with Death
- When Spring brings back blue days and fair.
- It may be he shall take my hand
- And lead me into his dark land
- And close my eyes and quench my breath -- -
- It may be I shall pass him still.
- I have a rendezvous with Death
- On some scarred slope of battered hill,
- When Spring comes round again this year
- And the first meadow-flowers appear.
- God knows 'twere better to be deep
- Pillowed in silk and scented down,
- Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep,
- Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
- Where hushed awakenings are dear . . .
- But I've a rendezvous with Death
- At midnight in some flaming town,
- When Spring trips north again this year,
- And I to my pledged word am true,
- I shall not fail that rendezvous.
- Alan Seeger

- SIDNEY, in whom the heyday of romance
- Came to its precious and most perfect flower,
- Whether you tourneyed with victorious lance
- Or brought sweet roundelays to Stella's bower,
- I give myself some credit for the way
- I have kept clean of what enslaves and lowers,
- Shunned the ideals of our present day
- And studied those that were esteemed in yours;
- For, turning from the mob that buys Success
- By sacrificing all Life's better part,
- Down the free roads of human happiness
- I frolicked, poor of purse but light of heart,
- And lived in strict devotion all along
- To my three idols -- - Love and Arms and Song.
- Alan Seeger

- 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
- Sigh sometimes for a life less cramped and bowed,
- I think I might have done a great deal worse;
- For I have ever gone untied and free,
- The stars and my high thoughts for company;
- Wet with the salt-spray and the mountain showers,
- I have had the sense of space and amplitude,
- And love in many places, silver-shoed,
- Has come and scattered all my path with flowers.
- Alan Seeger

- 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 all my lyric being, when you pass,
- Is bowed and filled with sudden murmuring.
- I asked you nothing and expected less,
- But, with that deep, impassioned tenderness
- Of one approaching what he most adores,
- I only wished to lose a little space
- All thought of my own life, and in its place
- To live and dream and have my joy in yours.
- Alan Seeger

To . . . in church
- 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 lay this votive offering, to record
- How sweet your quiet beauty seemed to me.
- Enchanting girl, my faith is not a thing
- By futile prayers and vapid psalm-singing
- To vent in crowded nave and public pew.
- My creed is simple: that the world is fair,
- And beauty the best thing to worship there,
- And I confess it by adoring you.
- Alan Seeger

- 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 moment's refuge where my sense can find
- Refreshment, and my soul beatitude.
- Oh, be my gentle love a little while!
- Walk with me sometimes. Let me see you smile.
- Watching some night under a wintry sky,
- Before the charge, or on the bed of pain,
- These blessed memories shall revive again
- And be a power to cheer and fortify.
- Alan Seeger

- 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 make my dearest memory of the thing
- That is but now my ultimate desire.
- And in old times I should have prayed to her
- Whose haunt the groves of windy Cyprus were,
- To prosper me and crown with good success
- My will to make of you the rose-twined bowl
- From whose inebriating brim my soul
- Shall drink its last of earthly happiness.
- Alan Seeger

- 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 more content to rule themselves and wait,
- Easing desire with discourse and sweet rhyme.
- Nay, be capricious, willful; have no fear
- To wound me with unkindness done or said,
- Lest mutual devotion make too dear
- My life that hangs by a so slender thread,
- And happy love unnerve me before May
- For that stern part that I have yet to play.
- Alan Seeger

- 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 yet that never cost me any sleep;
- I lived untroubled and I shed no tears.
- Fools prate how war is an atrocious thing;
- I always knew that nothing it implied
- Equalled the agony of suffering
- Of him who loves and loves unsatisfied.
- War is a refuge to a heart like this;
- Love only tells it what true torture is.
- Alan Seeger

- 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,
- Although, Heaven knows, 'tis not so easy near.
- Oh, you were made to make men miserable
- And torture those who would have joy in you,
- But I, who could have loved you, dear, so well,
- Take pride in being a good loser too;
- And it has not been wholly unsuccess,
- For I have rescued from forgetfulness
- Some moments of this precious time that flies,
- Adding to my past wealth of memory
- The pretty way you once looked up at me,
- Your low, sweet voice, your smile, and your dear eyes.
- Alan Seeger

- 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 and toil,
- I knew what came the nearest to content.
- For there at least my troubled flesh was free
- From the gadfly Desire that plagued it so;
- Discord and Strife were what I used to know,
- Heartaches, deception, murderous jealousy;
- By War transported far from all of these,
- Amid the clash of arms I was at peace.
- Alan Seeger

On Returning to the Front after Leave
- 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 and bind
- Brave hearts in one intrepid brotherhood
- And leave the shams and imbeciles behind.
- Now turn we joyful to the great attacks,
- Not only that we face in a fair field
- Our valiant foe and all his deadly tools,
- But also that we turn disdainful backs
- On that poor world we scorn yet die to shield -- -
- That world of cowards, hypocrites, and fools.
- Alan Seeger

- 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 more and bring to these
- The worship of an undivided heart.
- Of those sweet potentialities that wait
- For my heart's deep desire to fecundate
- I shall resume the search, if Fortune grants;
- And the great cities of the world shall yet
- Be golden frames for me in which to set
- New masterpieces of more rare romance.
- Alan Seeger
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