Poems by Alan Seeger Part 7

Here, with the wind in lovely locks laid bare, With arms oft raised in dedicative prayer, Lost in mute rapture and adoring wonder, He stood, till the far noise of noontide thunder, Rolled down upon the m.u.f.fled harmonies Of wind and waterfall and whispering trees, Made loneliness more lone. Some Panic fear Would seize him then, as they who seemed to hear In Tracian valleys or Thessalian woods The G.o.d's hallooing wake the leafy solitudes; I think it was the same: some piercing sense Of Deity's pervasive immanence, The Life that visible Nature doth indwell Grown great and near and all but palpable . . .

He might not linger, but with winged strides Like one pursued, fled down the mountain-sides -- Down the long ridge that edged the steep ravine, By glade and flowery lawn and upland green, And never paused nor felt a.s.sured again But where the gra.s.sy foothills opened. Then, While shadows lengthened on the plain below And the sun vanished and the sunset-glow Looked back upon the world with fervid eye Through the barred windows of the western sky, Homeward he fared, while many a look behind Showed the receding ranges dim-outlined, Highland and hollow where his path had lain, Veiled in deep purple of the mountain rain.

The Wanderer

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 tongues when day Flooded with gold some domed metropolis, Between new towers to waken and new bliss Spread on his pillow in a wondrous way:

These were his joys. Oft under bulging crates, Coming to market with his morning load, The peasant found him early on his road To greet the sunrise at the city-gates, --

There where the meadows waken in its rays, Golden with mist, and the great roads commence, And backward, where the chimney-tops are dense, Cathedral-arches glimmer through the haze.

White dunes that breaking show a strip of sea, A plowman and his team against the blue, Swiss pastures musical with cowbells, too, And poplar-lined ca.n.a.ls in Picardie,

And coast-towns where the vultures back and forth Sail in the clear depths of the tropic sky, And swallows in the sunset where they fly Over gray Gothic cities in the north,

And the wine-cellar and the chorus there, The dance-hall and a face among the crowd, -- Were all delights that made him sing aloud For joy to sojourn in a world so fair.

Back of his footsteps as he journeyed fell Range after range; ahead blue hills emerged.

Before him tireless to applaud it surged The sweet interminable spectacle.

And like the west behind a sundown sea Shone the past joys his memory retraced, And bright as the blue east he always faced Beckoned the loves and joys that were to be.

From every branch a blossom for his brow He gathered, singing down Life's flower-lined road, And youth impelled his spirit as he strode Like winged Victory on the galley's prow.

That Loveliness whose being sun and star, Green Earth and dawn and amber evening robe, That lamp whereof the opalescent globe The season's emulative splendors are,

That veiled divinity whose beams transpire From every pore of universal s.p.a.ce, As the fair soul illumes the lovely face -- That was his guest, his pa.s.sion, his desire.

His heart the love of Beauty held as hides One gem most pure a casket of pure gold.

It was too rich a lesser thing to hold; It was not large enough for aught besides.

The Need to Love

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 beauty of the west on fire, The moonlit hills from cloister-cas.e.m.e.nts viewed, Cloud-like arose the image of desire, And cast out peace and maddened solitude.

I sought the City and the hopes it held: With smoke and brooding vapors intercurled, As the thick roofs and walls close-paralleled Shut out the fair horizons of the world --

A truant from the fields and rustic joy, In my changed thought that image even so Shut out the G.o.ds I wors.h.i.+pped as a boy And all the pure delights I used to know.

Often the veil has trembled at some tide Of lovely reminiscence and revealed How much of beauty Nature holds beside Sweet lips that sacrifice and arms that yield:

Clouds, window-framed, beyond the huddled eaves When summer c.u.mulates their golden chains, Or from the parks the smell of burning leaves, Fragrant of childhood in the country lanes,

An organ-grinder's melancholy tune In rainy streets, or from an attic sill The blue skies of a windy afternoon Where our kites climbed once from some gra.s.sy hill:

And my soul once more would be wrapped entire In the pure peace and blessing of those years Before the fierce infection of Desire Had ravaged all the flesh. Through starting tears

Shone that lost Paradise; but, if it did, Again ere long the prison-shades would fall That Youth condemns itself to walk amid, So narrow, but so beautiful withal.

And I have followed Fame with less devotion, And kept no real ambition but to see Rise from the foam of Nature's sunlit ocean My dream of palpable divinity;

And aught the world contends for to mine eye Seemed not so real a meaning of success As only once to clasp before I die My vision of embodied happiness.

El Extraviado

Over the radiant ridges borne out on the offsh.o.r.e wind, I have sailed as a b.u.t.terfly sails whose priming wings unfurled Leave the familiar gardens and visited fields behind To follow a cloud in the east rose-flushed on the rim of the world.

I have strayed from the trodden highway for walking with upturned eyes On the way of the wind in the treetops, and the drift of the tinted rack.

For the will to be losing no wonder of sunny or starlit skies I have chosen the sod for my pillow and a threadbare coat for my back.

Evening of ample horizons, opaline, delicate, pure, Shadow of clouds on green valleys, trailed over meadows and trees, Cities of ardent adventure where the harvests of Joy mature, Forests whose murmuring voices are amorous prophecies,

World of romance and profusion, still round my journey spread The glamours, the glints, the enthralments, the nurture of one whose feet From hours unblessed by beauty nor lighted by love have fled As the shade of the tomb on his pathway and the scent of the winding-sheet.

I never could rest from roving nor put from my heart this need To be seeing how lovably Nature in flower and face hath wrought, -- In flower and meadow and mountain and heaven where the white clouds breed And the cunning of silken meshes where the heart's desire lies caught.

Over the azure expanses, on the offsh.o.r.e breezes borne, I have sailed as a b.u.t.terfly sails, nor recked where the impulse led, Sufficed with the suns.h.i.+ne and freedom, the warmth and the summer morn, The infinite glory surrounding, the infinite blue ahead.

La Nue

Oft when sweet music undulated round, Like the full moon out of a perfumed sea Thine image from the waves of blissful sound Rose and thy sudden light illumined me.

And in the country, leaf and flower and air Would alter and the eternal shape emerge; Because they spoke of thee the fields seemed fair, And Joy to wait at the horizon's verge.

The little cloud-gaps in the east that filled Gray afternoons with bits of tenderest blue Were windows in a palace pearly-silled That thy voluptuous traits came glimmering through.

And in the city, dominant desire For which men toil within its prison-bars, I watched thy white feet moving in the mire And thy white forehead hid among the stars.

Mystical, feminine, provoking, nude, Radiant there with rosy arms outspread, Sum of fulfillment, sovereign att.i.tude, Sensual with laughing lips and thrown-back head,