A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916)
The need to love that all the stars obey
Entered my heart and banished all beside.
Bare were the gardens where I used to stray;
Faded the flowers that one time satisfied.
Before the beauty of the west on fire,
The moonlit hills from cloister-casements viewed
Cloud-like arose the image of desire,
And cast out peace and maddened solitude.
I sought the City and the hopes it held:
With smoke and brooding vapors intercurled,
As the thick roofs and walls close-paralleled
Shut out the fair horizons of the world—
A truant from the fields and rustic joy,
In my changed thought that image even so
Shut out the gods I worshipped as a boy
And all the pure delights I used to know.
Often the veil has trembled at some tide
Of lovely reminiscence and revealed
How much of beauty Nature holds beside
Sweet lips that sacrifice and arms that yield:
Clouds, window-framed, beyond the huddled eaves
When summer cumulates their golden chains,
Or from the parks the smell of burning leaves,
Fragrant of childhood in the country lanes,
An organ-grinder’s melancholy tune
In rainy streets, or from an attic sill
The blue skies of a windy afternoon
Where our kites climbed once from some grassy hill:
And my soul once more would be wrapped entire
In the pure peace and blessing of those years.
Before the fierce infection of Desire
Had ravaged all the flesh. Through starting tears
Shone that lost Paradise; but, if it did,
Again ere long the prison-shades would fall
That Youth condemns itself to walk amid,
So narrow, but so beautiful withal.
And I have followed Fame with less devotion,
And kept no real ambition but to see
Rise from the foam of Nature’s sunlit ocean
My dream of palpable divinity;
And aught the world contends for to mine eye
Seemed not so real a meaning of success
As only once to clasp before I die
My vision of embodied happiness.
A few random poems:
- On Tam the Chapman by Robert Burns
- Dance with ME by Neelam Sinha
- Song by Margaret Widdemer
- Владимир Маяковский – Радуются ли империалисты-победители? (Главполитпросвет №335)
- My Heart Was Full by Stevie Smith
- Олег Бундур – Что будет, если
- Leisure by William Henry Davies
- I’ve dreamt of dreaming ’bout you by Vinko Kalinić
- Miserimus
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- Алишер Навои – То не заросли тюльпанов
- Woman With Parasol by Martin Willitts Jr.
- The Spires Of Oxford by Winifred Mary Letts
- Independence poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- Владимир Орлов – Где петушок носит гребешок
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
- Betrayal by Priyanka Dutt
- Anguish of Fate by Pierre Reverdy
- Abyss by Pierre Reverdy
- A Saturday Sunrise by Philo Ikonya
- A reason for you by Pritha halder
- A man who set his journey back to time by Preeth Nambiar
- A Longing for Silence! by Preeth Nambiar
- A Heart Divided by Pierre Reverdy
- A dragonfly that committed suicide by Preeth Nambiar
- Encounter In The Chestnut Avenue by Rainer Maria Rilke
- Duino Elegies: The Tenth Elegy by Rainer Maria Rilke
- Duino Elegies: The Fourth Elegy by Rainer Maria Rilke
- Eve by Rainer Maria Rilke
- Dedication To M… by Rainer Maria Rilke
- Early Spring by Rainer Maria Rilke
- Exposed On The Cliffs Of The Heart by Rainer Maria Rilke
- Extinguish Thou My Eyes by Rainer Maria Rilke
- Dedication by Rainer Maria Rilke
- Child In Red by Rainer Maria Rilke
- As Once The Winged Energy Of Delight by Rainer Maria Rilke
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Parallel Translations of Poetry
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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.