Poems by Alan Seeger Part 12

My life, whose whole religion Beauty is, Be charged with sin if ever before yours A lesser feeling crossed my mind than his Who owning grandeur marvels and adores.

Nay, rather in my dream-world's ivory tower I made your image the high pearly sill, And mounting there in many a wistful hour, Burdened with love, I trembled and was still, Seeing discovered from that azure height Remote, untrod horizons of delight.

Sonnet XIV

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 One from the train of Love's true courtiers Straightway on him who gazes, unawares, Deep wonder seizes and swift trembling grows, Reft by that sight of purpose and repose, Hardly its weight his fainting breast upbears.

Then on the soul from some ancestral place Floods back remembrance of its heavenly birth, When, in the light of that serener sphere, It saw ideal beauty face to face That through the forms of this our meaner Earth s.h.i.+nes with a beam less steadfast and less clear.

Sonnet XV

Above the ruin of G.o.d's holy place, Where man-forsaken lay the bleeding rood, Whose hands, when men had craved substantial food, Gave not, nor folded when they cried, Embrace, I saw exalted in the latter days Her whom west winds with natal foam bedewed, Wafted toward Cyprus, lily-breasted, nude, Standing with arms out-stretched and flower-like face.

And, sick with all those centuries of tears Shed in the penance for fact.i.tious woe, Once more I saw the nations at her feet, For Love shone in their eyes, and in their ears Come unto me, Love beckoned them, for lo!

The breast your lips abjured is still as sweet.

Sonnet XVI

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.

Naked, uplifting in a laden tray New milk and honey and sweet-tinctured wine, Not without twigs of cl.u.s.tering apple-spray To wreath a garland for Our Lady's shrine.

The morning planet poised above the sea Shall drop sweet influence through her drowsing lid; Dew-drenched, his delicate virginity Shall scarce disturb the flowers he kneels amid, That, waked so lightly, shall lift up their eyes, Cus.h.i.+on his knees, and nod between his thighs.

Kyrenaikos

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.

Antinous

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.

Vivien

Her eyes under their lashes were blue pools Fringed round with lilies; her bright hair unfurled Clothed her as suns.h.i.+ne 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 peac.o.c.ks 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.

I Loved . . .

I loved ill.u.s.trious 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 wors.h.i.+pped, 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.

Virginibus Puerisque . . .

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 l.u.s.trum of my days.

With a Copy of Shakespeare's Sonnets on Leaving College

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.

Written in a Volume of the Comtesse de Noailles

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.