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 

• Astrophel and Stella: III by Sir Philip Sidney by Philip Sidney
• Astrophel and Stella: I by Sir Philip Sidney by Philip Sidney
• Astrophel And Stella-First Song by Sir Philip Sidney by Philip Sidney
• To The Honble Commodore Hood on His Pardoning a Deserter by Phillis Wheatley by Phillis Wheatley
• To Mrs. Leonard on The Death of Her Husband by Phillis Wheatley by Phillis Wheatley
• Phillis Wheatley – Phillis Wheatley by Phillis Wheatley
• On The Death of Mr. Snider Murder’d By Richardson by Phillis Wheatley by Phillis Wheatley
• On Messrs Hussey and Coffin by Phillis Wheatley by Phillis Wheatley
• On Friendship by Phillis Wheatley by Phillis Wheatley
• To The Honble Commodore Hood on His Pardoning a Deserter by Phillis Wheatley by Phillis Wheatley
• His Excellency General Washington by Phillis Wheatley by Phillis Wheatley
• On Friendship by Phillis Wheatley by Phillis Wheatley
• America by Phillis Wheatley by Phillis Wheatley
• To The University Of Cambridge, In New-England by Phillis Wheatley by Phillis Wheatley
• To The Right Honourable William, Earl Of Dartmouth, His Majesty’s Principal Secretary Of The State For North-America, by Phillis Wheatley by Phillis Wheatley
• To the Rev. Dr. Thomas Amory by Phillis Wheatley by Phillis Wheatley
• To The King’s Most Excellent Majesty by Phillis Wheatley by Phillis Wheatley
• To The Honourable T. H. Esq; On the Death Of His Daughter by Phillis Wheatley by Phillis Wheatley
• To S.M., A Young African Painter, On Seeing His Works by Phillis Wheatley by Phillis Wheatley
• To Mæcenas by Phillis Wheatley by Phillis Wheatley

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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.

 

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