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:
- Карл Сэндберг – Анекдот о цикуте для двух афинян
- Trendy Madness In Fashion Meccas
- Омар Хайям – День каждый услаждай вином
- Николай Языков – Песня (Я жду тебя, когда вечерней мглою)
- Михаил Кузмин – Заключение (Водительница Одигитрия)
- The Deep-Sea Cables by Rudyard Kipling
- Гавриил Державин – Афинейскому витязю
- In Imitation of Chaucer poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster
- Sonnet 06
- The Lover Mourns For The Loss Of Love by William Butler Yeats
- Sonnet LXIV by William Shakespeare
- The Sequel to a Reminiscence poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Green Fields by W. S. Merwin
- Василий Жуковский – Бедный певец
- The Captive Trumpeter by William Somervile
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
- Apologetic Postscript Of A Year Later by Robert Louis Stevenson
- An English Breeze by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Air Of Diabelli’s by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Ad Se Ipsum by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Ad Quintilianum by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Ad Piscatorem by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Ad Olum by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Ad Nepotem by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Ad Martialem by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Ad Magistrum Ludi by Robert Louis Stevenson
- About The Sheltered Garden Ground by Robert Louis Stevenson
- A Valentine’s Song by Robert Louis Stevenson
- A Thought by Robert Louis Stevenson
- A Good Play by Robert Louis Stevenson
- A Good Boy by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Upon Her Eyes by Robert Herrick
- The Hock-cart, or Harvest Home by Robert Herrick
- To Youth by Robert Herrick
- SOFT MUSIC by Robert Herrick
- The Bride-Cake by Robert Herrick
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.