Alan Seeger

Poems Alan Seeger

Excerpt: ...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 offshore breezes borne,  I have sailed as a butterfly sails, nor recked where the impulse led, Sufficed with the sunshine 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...