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:
- Hope In Spring by William Barnes
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- Among hills Apache red poem – Amy Michelle Mosier poems | Poems and Poetry
- Robert Burns: Up In The Morning Early:
- Lament Of Mary Queen Of Scots by William Wordsworth
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- One Step Backward Taken by Robert Frost
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- Олег Чупров – Шаньги
- Высоцкий – Спасибо, что живой: стих, текст “Мой черный человек в костюме сером” – Poetry Monster
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
- Prisoner by Rabindranath Tagore
- Playthings by Rabindranath Tagore
- Patience by Rabindranath Tagore
- Passing Breeze by Rabindranath Tagore
- Parting Words by Rabindranath Tagore
- Paper Boats by Rabindranath Tagore
- Only Thee by Rabindranath Tagore
- On the Seashore by Rabindranath Tagore
- Old And New by Rabindranath Tagore
- Ocean of Forms by Rabindranath Tagore
- O Fool by Rabindranath Tagore
- My Song by Rabindranath Tagore
- My Friend by Rabindranath Tagore
- Moment’s Indulgence by Rabindranath Tagore
- Maya by Rabindranath Tagore
- Lover’s Gifts XXXIX: There Is a Looker-On by Rabindranath Tagore
- Lover’s Gifts XXVIII: I Dreamt by Rabindranath Tagore
- Lover’s Gifts XXII: I Shall Gladly Suffer by Rabindranath Tagore
- Lover’s Gifts XVIII: Your Days by Rabindranath Tagore
- Lover’s Gifts XVI: She Dwelt Here by the Pool by Rabindranath Tagore
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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.