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 

• Sonnet 20: A woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet 1: From fairest creatures we desire increase by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet 19: Devouring Time blunt thou the lion’s paws by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet 17: Who will believe my verse in time to come by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet 16: But wherefore do not you a mightier way by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet 15: When I consider every thing that grows by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet 154: The little Love-god lying once asleep by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet 153: Cupid laid by his brand and fell asleep by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet 152: In loving thee thou know’st I am forsworn by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet 151: Love is too young to know what conscience is by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet 150: O from what power hast thou this powerful might by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet 14: Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet 54: O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet 53: What is your substance, whereof are you made by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet 52: So am I as the rich whose blessèd key by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet 51: Thus can my love excuse the slow offence by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet 50: How heavy do I journey on the way by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet 4: Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet 49: Against that time, if ever that time come by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

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