The Aisne

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.

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Poems in English 

• Sonnet CXXX: My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet CXXX by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Winter by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• When to the sessions of sweet silent thought (Sonnet 30) by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• When that I was and a little tiny boy by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes (Sonnet 29) by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Under the Greenwood Tree by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Three Songs by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• The Quality of Mercy by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• The Phoenix and the Turtle by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Spring in New Hampshire by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnets CXVI: Let me not to the marriage of true minds by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet LXXI by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet LXX by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet LXVII by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet LXVI by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet LXV by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet LXIX by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet LXIV: When I Have Seen by Time’s Fell Hand Defac’d by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

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