Poems by Alan Seeger

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I Have A Rendezvous With Death

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 a rendezvous with Death

When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand

And lead me into his dark land

220

by Alan Seeger

Do You Remember Once

Do you remember once, in Paris of glad faces,

The night we wandered off under the third moon's rays

And, leaving far behind bright streets and busy places,

Stood where the Seine flowed down between its quiet quais?

The city's voice was hushed; the placid, lustrous waters

Mirrored the walls across where orange windows burned.

Out of the starry south provoking rumors brought us

Far promise of the spring already northward turned.

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by Alan Seeger

Sonnet IX

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 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;

109

Alan Seeger

Ode In Memory Of The American Volunteers Fallen For France

(To have been read before the statue of Lafayette and Washington in

Paris, on Decoration Day, May 30, 1916.)

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 every town are garlanded,

That pious tribute should be given too

Alan Seeger

At The Tomb Of Napoleon

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 mould? Can Art acclaim

No hero now, no man with whom men side

As with their hearts' high needs personified?

There are will say, One such our lips could name;

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Alan Seeger

A Message To America

You have the grit and the guts, I know;

You are ready to answer blow for blow

You are virile, combative, stubborn, hard,

But your honor ends with your own back-yard;

Each man intent on his private goal,

You have no feeling for the whole;

What singly none would tolerate

You let unpunished hit the state,

133

Alan Seeger

The Rendezvous

He faints with hope and fear. It is the hour.

Distant, across the thundering organ-swell,

In sweet discord from the cathedral-tower,

Fall the faint chimes and the thrice-sequent bell.

Over the crowd his eye uneasy roves.

He sees a plume, a fur; his heart dilates —

Soars . . . and then sinks again. It is not hers he loves.

She will not come, the woman that he waits.

104

Alan Seeger

Sonnet I

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 out of orient chambers, cool and sweet,

Like Nature's pure lustration, Dusk comes down.

Now the lamps brighten and the quickening town

Rings with the trample of returning feet.

119

Alan Seeger

Resurgam

Exiled afar from youth and happy love,

If Death should ravish my fond spirit hence

I have no doubt but, like a homing dove,

It would return to its dear residence,

And through a thousand stars find out the road

Back into earthly flesh that was its loved abode.

114

Alan Seeger

The Bayadere

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 there was invitation in her voice

And laughing lips and wonderful dark eyes,

As though above the gates of Paradise

Fair verses bade, Be welcome and rejoice!

111

Alan Seeger

Maktoob

A shell surprised our post one day

And killed a comrade at my side.

My heart was sick to see the way

He suffered as he died.

I dug about the place he fell,

And found, no bigger than my thumb,

A fragment of the splintered shell

In warm aluminum.

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Alan Seeger

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 grasses roll,

Come thou no less and, kneeling in a shoal

Of the freaked flag and meadow buttercup,

Bend till thine image from the pool beam up

Arched with blue heaven like an aureole.

107

Alan Seeger