Alan Seeger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oft as by chance, a little while apart The pall of empty, loveless hours withdrawn, Sweet Beauty, opening on the impoverished heart, Beams like the jewel on the breast of dawn: Not though high

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.

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

In Lyonesse was beauty enough, men say: Long Summer loaded the orchards to excess, And fertile lowlands lengthening far away, In Lyonesse. Came a term to that land’s old favoredness: Past the sea-walls, crumbled

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

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

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, The altar unset and the candle unlit. Let

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 Clamor from every copse and orchard-side, I watched the red

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

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

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 To follow a cloud in

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

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

O happiness, I know not what far seas, Blue hills and deep, thy sunny realms surround, That thus in Music’s wistful harmonies And concert of sweet sound A rumor steals, from some uncertain shore,

Thy petals yet are closely curled, Rose of the world, Around their scented, golden core; Nor yet has Summer purpled o’er Thy tender clusters that begin To swell within The dewy vine-leaves’ early screen

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

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

Deep in the sloping forest that surrounds The head of a green valley that I know, Spread the fair gardens and ancestral grounds Of Bellinglise, the beautiful chateau. Through shady groves and fields of

I have a rendezvous with Death At some disputed barricade, 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

I Ay, it is fitting on this holiday, Commemorative of our soldier dead, When with sweet flowers of our New England May Hiding the lichened stones by fifty years made gray Their graves in

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The lad I was I longer now Nor am nor shall be evermore. Spring’s lovely blossoms from my brow Have shed their petals on the floor. Thou, Love, hast been my lord, thy shrine