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:
- Sonnet I
- A Pen Wrote The Funeral by Stevens Cadet
- Vorticism Is A Choka In Its Modular Home
- Judith
- But I Was Looking At The Permanent Stars by Wilfred Owen
- Константин Бальмонт – Если грустно тебе
- Robert Burns: On Politics:
- English Poetry. Madison Julius Cawein. Garden and Gardener. Мэдисон Джулиус Кавейн.
- The Soldier poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- The Sea And the Hills by Rudyard Kipling
- Алексей Николаевич Толстой – Гроза
- Reply to an Announcement by J. Rankine by Robert Burns
- The Song Maker by Sara Teasdale
- The Holy Mountain of Hope by Thomas Ziemer
- Facing West from California’s Shores. by Walt Whitman
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
- The Kiss: A Dialogue by Robert Herrick
- His Poetry His Pillar by Robert Herrick
- His Mistress to Him at his Farewell by Robert Herrick
- His Loss by Robert Herrick
- His Last Request to Julia by Robert Herrick
- Delight in Disorder by Robert Herrick
- An Ode of the Birth of our Saviour by Robert Herrick
- AN ODE FOR BEN JONSON by Robert Herrick
- AN HYMN TO THE MUSES by Robert Herrick
- An Epitaph Upon A Virgin by Robert Herrick
- AN EPITAPH UPON A CHILD by Robert Herrick
- AMBITION by Robert Herrick
- ALL THINGS DECAY AND DIE by Robert Herrick
- A VOW TO VENUS by Robert Herrick
- A Thanksgiving to God for His House by Robert Herrick
- A Ring Presented to Julia by Robert Herrick
- A REQUEST TO THE GRACES by Robert Herrick
- A Pastoral Upon The Birth of Prince Charles: Presented to the King, and Set by Mr Nic. Laniere by Robert Herrick
- A PASTORAL SUNG TO THE KING by Robert Herrick
- A PARANAETICALL, OR ADVISIVE VERSETO HIS FRIEND, MR JOHN WICKS 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.