The Need To Love

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.

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Poems in English 

• Olney Hymn 26: On Opening A Place For Social Prayer by William Cowper by William Cowper
• Olney Hymn 24: Prayer For Children by William Cowper by William Cowper
• Olney Hymn 23: Pleading For And With Youth by William Cowper by William Cowper
• Olney Hymn 22: Prayer For A Blessing In The Young by William Cowper by William Cowper
• Lines Addressed To Dr. Darwin, Author Of The ‘Botanic Garden.’ by William Cowper by William Cowper
• Joy In Martyrdom by William Cowper by William Cowper
• Invitation To The Redbreast by William Cowper by William Cowper
• Inscription For The Tomb Of Mr. Hamilton by William Cowper by William Cowper
• Inscription For A Stone Erected At The Sowing Of A Grove Of Oaks At Chillington, Anno 1791 by William Cowper by William Cowper
• Inscription For A Stone Erected At The Sowing Of A Grove Of Oaks At Chillington, Anno 1790 by William Cowper by William Cowper
• Inscription For A Moss-House In The Shrubbery At Weston by William Cowper by William Cowper
• Inscription For A Hermitage In The Author’s Garden by William Cowper by William Cowper
• In Seditionem Horrendam, Corruptelis Gallicus Ut Fertue, Londini Nuper Exortam by William Cowper by William Cowper
• In Memory Of The Late John Thornton, Esq. by William Cowper by William Cowper
• In A Letter To C. P. Esq. In Imitation Of Shakspeare by William Cowper by William Cowper
• In A Letter To C. P. Esq. Ill With The Rheumatism by William Cowper by William Cowper
• Hymn For The Use Of The Sunday School At Olney by William Cowper by William Cowper
• Hope, Like The Short-lived Ray That Gleams Awhile by William Cowper by William Cowper
• Gratitude And Love To God by William Cowper by William Cowper
• Gratitude, Addressed To Lady Hesketh by William Cowper by William Cowper

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