Life poems
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Sonnet 05
© Alan Seeger
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.
Sonnet 03
© Alan Seeger
Why should you be astonished that my heart,
Plunged for so long in darkness and in dearth,
Should be revived by you, and stir and start
As by warm April now, reviving Earth?
Sonnet 02
© Alan Seeger
Not that I always struck the proper mean
Of what mankind must give for what they gain,
But, when I think of those whom dull routine
And the pursuit of cheerless toil enchain,
Sonnet 01
© Alan Seeger
Sidney, in whom the heyday of romance
Came to its precious and most perfect flower,
Whether you tourneyed with victorious lance
Or brought sweet roundelays to Stella's bower,
Paris
© Alan Seeger
First, London, for its myriads; for its height,
Manhattan heaped in towering stalagmite;
But Paris for the smoothness of the paths
That lead the heart unto the heart's delight. . . .
Maktoob
© Alan Seeger
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.
Liebestod
© Alan Seeger
I who, conceived beneath another star,
Had been a prince and played with life, instead
Have been its slave, an outcast exiled far
From the fair things my faith has merited.
Fragments
© Alan Seeger
There was a time when I thought much of Fame,
And laid the golden edifice to be
That in the clear light of eternity
Should fitly house the glory of my name.
Champagne, 1914-15
© Alan Seeger
In the glad revels, in the happy fetes,
When cheeks are flushed, and glasses gilt and pearled
With the sweet wine of France that concentrates
The sunshine and the beauty of the world,
An Ode to Antares
© Alan Seeger
At dusk, when lowlands where dark waters glide
Robe in gray mist, and through the greening hills
The hoot-owl calls his mate, and whippoorwills
Clamor from every copse and orchard-side,
All That's Not Love . . .
© Alan Seeger
All that's not love is the dearth of my days,
The leaves of the volume with rubric unwrit,
The temple in times without prayer, without praise,
The altar unset and the candle unlit.
After an Epigram of Clement Marot
© Alan Seeger
The lad I was I longer now
Nor am nor shall be evermore.
Spring's lovely blossoms from my brow
Have shed their petals on the floor.
Ode in Memory of the American Volunteers Fallen for France
© Alan Seeger
IAy, 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 --
Do You Remember Once . . .
© Alan Seeger
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?
Whispering in Wattle -Boughs
© Adam Lindsay Gordon
OH, gaily sings the bird! and the wattle-boughs are stirred
And rustled by the scented breath of Spring;
Oh, the dreary wistful longing! Oh, the faces that are thronging!
Oh, the voices that are vaguely whispering!
The Swimmer
© Adam Lindsay Gordon
With short, sharp violent lights made vivid,
To the southward far as the sight can roam,
Only the swirl of the surges livid,
The seas that climb and the surfs that comb,
The Sick Stockrider
© Adam Lindsay Gordon
Ah! those days and nights we squandered at the Logans' in the glen --
The Logans, man and wife, have long been dead.
Elsie's tallest girl seems taller than your little Elsie then;
And Ethel is a woman grown and wed.
The Last Leap
© Adam Lindsay Gordon
ALL is over! fleet career,
Dash of greyhound slipping thongs,
Flight of falcon, bound of deer,
Mad hoof-thunder in our rear,
Cold air rushing up our lungs,
Din of many tongues.
Lament for Zenocrate
© Christopher Morley
Black is the beauty of the brightest day,
The golden belle of heaven's eternal fire,
That danced with glory on the silver waves,
Now wants the fuel that inflamed his beams:
The Song
© Andrei Voznesensky
Sailor, my dear, my heaven-made spouse!
There is one thing that I beg of you, man:
Kiss any strangers, and give them your flowers,
love many women. But, pray, don't love one.
