A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916)
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.
Winter came down on us. The low clouds, torn
In the stark branches of the riven pines,
Blurred the white rockets that from dusk till morn
Traced the wide curve of the close-grappling lines.
In rain, and fog that on the withered hill
Froze before dawn, the lurking foe drew down;
Or light snows fell that made forlorner still
The ravaged country and the ruined town;
Or the long clouds would end. Intensely fair,
The winter constellations blazing forth —
Perseus, the Twins, Orion, the Great Bear —
Gleamed on our bayonets pointing to the north.
And the lone sentinel would start and soar
On wings of strong emotion as he knew
That kinship with the stars that only War
Is great enough to lift man’s spirit to.
And ever down the curving front, aglow
With the pale rockets’ intermittent light,
He heard, like distant thunder, growl and grow
The rumble of far battles in the night, —
Rumors, reverberant, indistinct, remote,
Borne from red fields whose martial names have won
The power to thrill like a far trumpet-note, —
Vic, Vailly, Soupir, Hurtelise, Craonne . . .
Craonne, before thy cannon-swept plateau,
Where like sere leaves lay strewn September’s dead,
I found for all dear things I forfeited
A recompense I would not now forego.
For that high fellowship was ours then
With those who, championing another’s good,
More than dull Peace or its poor votaries could,
Taught us the dignity of being men.
There we drained deeper the deep cup of life,
And on sublimer summits came to learn,
After soft things, the terrible and stern,
After sweet Love, the majesty of Strife;
There where we faced under those frowning heights
The blast that maims, the hurricane that kills;
There where the watchlights on the winter hills
Flickered like balefire through inclement nights;
There where, firm links in the unyielding chain,
Where fell the long-planned blow and fell in vain —
Hearts worthy of the honor and the trial,
We helped to hold the lines along the Aisne.
A few random poems:
- I Want To Die In My Own Bed by Yehuda Amichai
- The Saint And The Hunchback by William Butler Yeats
- The Triumph Of Achilles by Paul Celan
- Sonnet Of Motherhood XXIV poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- The Lady’s Third Song by William Butler Yeats
- Cell Mate
- Владимир Набоков – Простая песня, грусть простая
- Robinson by Weldon Kees
- Иван Мятлев – Розы
- Владимир Луговской – Жестокое пробужденье
- Beachy Blues poem – Andrew Neil Maternick poems | Poems and Poetry
- A Code of Morals by Rudyard Kipling
- Lo! Victress on the Peaks. by Walt Whitman
- The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot
- Stupidity poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
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
- Says. by Walt Whitman
- Savantism. by Walt Whitman
- Salut au Monde. by Walt Whitman
- Runner, The. by Walt Whitman
- Roots and Leaves Themselves Alone. by Walt Whitman
- Roaming in Thought. by Walt Whitman
- Rise, O Days. by Walt Whitman
- Respondez! by Walt Whitman
- Recorders Ages Hence. by Walt Whitman
- Reconciliation. by Walt Whitman
- Race of Veterans. by Walt Whitman
- Quicksand Years. by Walt Whitman
- Proud Music of The Storm by Walt Whitman
- Primeval my Love for the Woman I Love. by Walt Whitman
- Prayer of Columbus. by Walt Whitman
- Prairie States, The. by Walt Whitman
- Prairie-Grass Dividing, The. by Walt Whitman
- Portals. by Walt Whitman
- Poets to Come. by Walt Whitman
- Poem of Remembrance for a Girl or a Boy. by Walt Whitman
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.