Poems by Alan Seeger Part 11

Sonnet III

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 nursed in beauty, like the stream Born of clear showers and the mountain dew, Close under snow-clad summits where they gleam Forever pure against heaven's orient blue.

Within the city's shades he walked at last.

Faint and more faint in sad recessional Down the dim corridors of Time outworn, A chorus ebbed from that forsaken past, A hymn of glories fled beyond recall With the lost heights and splendor of life's morn.

Sonnet IV

Up at his attic sill the South wind came And days of sun and storm but never peace.

Along the town's tumultuous arteries He heard the heart-throbs of a sentient frame: Each night the whistles in the bay, the same Whirl of incessant wheels and clanging cars: For smoke that half obscured, the circling stars Burnt like his youth with but a sickly flame.

Up to his attic came the city cries -- The throes with which her iron sinews heave -- And yet forever behind prison doors Welled in his heart and trembled in his eyes The light that hangs on desert hills at eve And tints the sea on solitary sh.o.r.es. . . .

Sonnet V

A tide of beauty with returning May Floods the fair city; from warm pavements fume Odors endeared; down avenues in bloom The chestnut-trees with phallic spires are gay.

Over the terrace flows the thronged cafe; The boulevards are streams of hurrying sound; And through the streets, like veins when they abound, The l.u.s.t for pleasure throbs itself away.

Here let me live, here let me still pursue Phantoms of bliss that beckon and recede, -- Thy strange allurements, City that I love, Maze of romance, where I have followed too The dream Youth treasures of its dearest need And stars beyond thy towers bring tidings of.

Sonnet VI

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 and radiant gatherings Where I drank deep the bliss of being young, The strife and sweet potential flux of things I sought Youth's dream of happiness among!

It walks here aureoled with the city-light, Forever through the myriad-featured ma.s.s Flaunting not far its fugitive embrace, -- Heard sometimes in a song across the night, Caught in a perfume from the crowds that pa.s.s, And when love yields to love seen face to face.

Sonnet VII

To me, a pilgrim on that journey bound Whose stations Beauty's bright examples are, As of a silken city famed afar Over the sands for wealth and holy ground, Came the report of one--a woman crowned With all perfection, blemishless and high, As the full moon amid the moonlit sky, With the world's praise and wonder clad around.

And I who held this notion of success: To leave no form of Nature's loveliness Unwors.h.i.+pped, if glad eyes have access there, -- Beyond all earthly bounds have made my goal To find where that sweet shrine is and extol The hand that triumphed in a work so fair.

Sonnet VIII

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 heaven should rend would deeper awe Fill me than penetrates my spirit thus, Nor all those signs the Patmian prophet saw Seem a new heaven and earth so marvelous; But, clad thenceforth in iridescent dyes, The fair world glistens, and in after days The memory of kind lips and laughing eyes Lives in my step and lightens all my face, -- So they who found the Earthly Paradise Still breathed, returned, of that sweet, joyful place.

Sonnet IX

Amid the florid mult.i.tude her face Was like the full moon seen behind the lace Of orchard boughs where clouded blossoms part When Spring s.h.i.+nes in the world and in the heart.

As the full-moon-beams to the ferny floor Of summer woods through flower and foliage pour, So to my being's innermost recess Flooded the light of so much loveliness; She held as in a vase of priceless ware The wine that over arid ways and bare My youth was the pathetic thirsting for, And where she moved the veil of Nature grew Diaphanous and that radiance mantled through Which, when I see, I tremble and adore.

Sonnet X

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 of conscious womanhood Adorning every little thing she does Sits like enchantment, making glorious A careless pose, a casual att.i.tude; Around her lovely shoulders mantle-wise Hath come the realm of those old fabulous queens Whose storied loves are Art's rich heritage, To keep alive in this our latter age That force that moving through sweet Beauty's means Lifts up Man's soul to towering enterprise.

Sonnet XI

* A paraphrase of Petrarca, 'Quando fra l'altre donne . . .'

When among creatures fair of countenance Love comes enformed in such proud character, So far as other beauty yields to her, So far the breast with fiercer longing pants; I bless the spot, and hour, and circ.u.mstance, That wed desire to a thing so high, And say, Glad soul, rejoice, for thou and I Of bliss unpaired are made partic.i.p.ants; Hence have come ardent thoughts and waking dreams That, feeding Fancy from so sweet a cup, Leave it no l.u.s.t for gross imaginings.

Through her the woman's perfect beauty gleams That while it gazes lifts the spirit up To that high source from which all beauty springs.

Sonnet XII

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 gra.s.ses roll, Come thou no less and, kneeling in a shoal Of the freaked flag and meadow b.u.t.tercup, Bend till thine image from the pool beam up Arched with blue heaven like an aureole.

See how adorable in fancy then Lives the fair face it mirrors even so, O thou whose beauty moving among men Is like the wind's way on the woods below, Filling all nature where its pathway lies With arms that supplicate and trembling sighs.

Sonnet XIII

I fancied, while you stood conversing there, Superb, in every att.i.tude a queen, Her ermine thus Boadicea bare, So moved amid the mult.i.tude Faustine.