A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916)
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.
I melted it, and made a mould,
And poured it in the opening,
And worked it, when the cast was cold,
Into a shapely ring.
And when my ring was smooth and bright,
Holding it on a rounded stick,
For seal, I bade a Turco write
Maktoob in Arabic.
Maktoob! “‘Tis written!” . . . So they think,
These children of the desert, who
From its immense expanses drink
Some of its grandeur too.
Within the book of Destiny,
Whose leaves are time, whose cover, space,
The day when you shall cease to be,
The hour, the mode, the place,
Are marked, they say; and you shall not
By taking thought or using wit
Alter that certain fate one jot,
Postpone or conjure it.
Learn to drive fear, then, from your heart.
If you must perish, know, O man,
‘Tis an inevitable part
Of the predestined plan.
And, seeing that through the ebon door
Once only you may pass, and meet
Of those that have gone through before
The mighty, the elite — —
Guard that not bowed nor blanched with fear
You enter, but serene, erect,
As you would wish most to appear
To those you most respect.
So die as though your funeral
Ushered you through the doors that led
Into a stately banquet hall
Where heroes banqueted;
And it shall all depend therein
Whether you come as slave or lord,
If they acclaim you as their kin
Or spurn you from their board.
So, when the order comes: “Attack!”
And the assaulting wave deploys,
And the heart trembles to look back
On life and all its joys;
Or in a ditch that they seem near
To find, and round your shallow trough
Drop the big shells that you can hear
Coming a half mile off;
When, not to hear, some try to talk,
And some to clean their guns, or sing,
And some dig deeper in the chalk –;
I look upon my ring:
And nerves relax that were most tense,
And Death comes whistling down unheard,
As I consider all the sense
Held in that mystic word.
And it brings, quieting like balm
My heart whose flutterings have ceased,
The resignation and the calm
And wisdom of the East.
A few random poems:
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Чесменские трофеи
- Юлия Друнина – Запас прочности
- The Music O’ The Dead by William Barnes
- Robert Burns: Epitaph For Mr. W. Cruikshank:
- The Gardener XX: Day After Day He Comes by Rabindranath Tagore
- Stretch Mark Cream – How Creams Help Remove Stretch Marks
- Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? by William Shakespeare
- Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey by William Wordsworth
- Sonnet Xiv
- Children’s Games by William Carlos Williams
- Tale of the Pope and of His Workman Balda
- Marsh Hymns by Sidney Lanier
- Pure call of the wilderness by Vinko Kalinic
- Of Clementina by Walter Savage Landor
- How To Achieve Self-Realization, The Mother of All Knowledge?
External links
Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus
Talking Writing Monster’s Page –
Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh
Poems in English
- A PANEGYRIC TO SIR LEWIS PEMBERTON by Robert Herrick
- A New Year’s Gift, Sent To Sir Simeon Steward by Robert Herrick
- A MEDITATION FOR HIS MISTRESS by Robert Herrick
- A MEAN IN OUR MEANS by Robert Herrick
- A Lyric to Mirth by Robert Herrick
- A HYMN TO VENUS AND CUPID by Robert Herrick
- A HYMN TO THE GRACES by Robert Herrick
- A Hymn to Love by Robert Herrick
- A HYMN TO BACCHUS by Robert Herrick
- A Dialogue Betwixt Himself and Mistress Eliza Wheeler, under the Name of Amarillis by Robert Herrick
- A COUNTRY LIFE:TO HIS BROTHER, MR THOMAS HERRICK by Robert Herrick
- A Conjuration To Electra by Robert Herrick
- A Christmas Carol, Sung to the King in the Presence at White-Hall by Robert Herrick
- A Child’s Grace by Robert Herrick
- A CANTICLE TO APOLLO by Robert Herrick
- A Bucolic Betwixt Two; Lacon and Thyrsis by Robert Herrick
- Under Cover of Night by Robert Desnos
- The Voice of Robert Desnos by Robert Desnos
- The Ring of Stars by Robert Desnos
- Sleep Spaces by Robert Desnos
More external links (open in a new tab):
Doska or the Board – write anything
Search engines:
Yandex – the best search engine for searches in Russian (and the best overall image search engine, in any language, anywhere)
Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.
Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees
Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.
Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.
Parallel Translations of Poetry
The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works
Alan Seeger (1888-1916) was an American war poet who fought and died in World War I during the Battle of the Somme, serving in the French Foreign Legion. Seeger was the brother of Charles Seeger, a noted American pacifist and musicologist and the uncle of folk musician, Pete Seeger.