Poems by Alan Seeger

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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.

by Alan Seeger

Sonnet II

Her courts are by the flux of flaming ways,

Between the rivers and the illumined sky

Whose fervid depths reverberate from on high

Fierce lustres mingled in a fiery haze.

They mark it inland; blithe and fair of face

Her suitors follow, guessing by the glare

Beyond the hilltops in the evening air

How bright the cressets at her portals blaze.

by Alan Seeger

Sonnet 12

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.

by Alan Seeger

Sonnet 05

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.

by Alan Seeger

The Hosts

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 trampling feet,

These are the men that have taken vows,

These are the hardy, the flower, the élite,—

by Alan Seeger

Translations: Dante - Inferno, Canto XXVI

Florence, rejoice! For thou o'er land and sea

So spread'st thy pinions that the fame of thee

Hath reached no less into the depths of Hell.

So noble were the five I found to dwell

Therein — thy sons — whence shame accrues to me

And no great praise is thine; but if it be

That truth unveil in dreamings before dawn,

Then is the vengeful hour not far withdrawn

by Alan Seeger

The Aisne

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.

by Alan Seeger

The Deserted Garden

I know a village in a far-off land

Where from a sunny, mountain-girdled plain

With tinted walls a space on either hand

And fed by many an olive-darkened lane

The high-road mounts, and thence a silver band

Through vineyard slopes above and rolling grain,

Winds off to that dim corner of the skies

Where behind sunset hills a stately city lies.

by Alan Seeger

To England At The Outbreak Of The Balkan War

A cloud has lowered that shall not soon pass o'er.

The world takes sides: whether for impious aims

With Tyranny whose bloody toll enflames

A generous people to heroic war;

Whether with Freedom, stretched in her own gore,

Whose pleading hands and suppliant distress

Still offer hearts that thirst for Righteousness

A glorious cause to strike or perish for.

by Alan Seeger

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.

Lie near me in dim forests where the croon

Of wood-doves sounds and moss-banked water flows,

Or musing late till the midsummer moon

Breaks through some ruined abbey's empty rose.

by Alan Seeger

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:

by Alan Seeger

Tezcotzinco

Though thou art now a ruin bare and cold,

Thou wert sometime the garden of a king.

The birds have sought a lovelier place to sing.

The flowers are few. It was not so of old.

It was not thus when hand in hand there strolled

Through arbors perfumed with undying Spring

Bare bodies beautiful, brown, glistening,

Decked with green plumes and rings of yellow gold.

by Alan Seeger