Tithonus

A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916)

So when the verdure of his life was shed,

With all the grace of ripened manlihead,

And on his locks, but now so lovable,

Old age like desolating winter fell,

Leaving them white and flowerless and forlorn:

Then from his bed the Goddess of the Morn

Softly withheld, yet cherished him no less

With pious works of pitying tenderness;

Till when at length with vacant, heedless eyes,

And hoary height bent down none otherwise

Than burdened willows bend beneath their weight

Of snow when winter winds turn temperate, —

So bowed with years — when still he lingered on:

Then to the daughter of Hyperion

This counsel seemed the best: for she, afar

By dove-gray seas under the morning star,

Where, on the wide world’s uttermost extremes,

Her amber-walled, auroral palace gleams,

High in an orient chamber bade prepare

An everlasting couch, and laid him there,

And leaving, closed the shining doors. But he,

Deathless by Jove’s compassionless decree,

Found not, as others find, a dreamless rest.

There wakeful, with half-waking dreams oppressed,

Still in an aural, visionary haze

Float round him vanished forms of happier days;

Still at his side he fancies to behold

The rosy, radiant thing beloved of old;

And oft, as over dewy meads at morn,

Far inland from a sunrise coast is borne

The drowsy, muffled moaning of the sea,

Even so his voice flows on unceasingly, —

Lisping sweet names of passion overblown,

Breaking with dull, persistent undertone

The breathless silence that forever broods

Round those colossal, lustrous solitudes.

Times change. Man’s fortune prospers, or it falls.

Change harbors not in those eternal halls

And tranquil chamber where Tithonus lies.

But through his window there the eastern skies

Fall palely fair to the dim ocean’s end.

There, in blue mist where air and ocean blend,

The lazy clouds that sail the wide world o’er

Falter and turn where they can sail no more.

There singing groves, there spacious gardens blow —

Cedars and silver poplars, row on row,

Through whose black boughs on her appointed night,

Flooding his chamber with enchanted light,

Lifts the full moon’s immeasurable sphere,

Crimson and huge and wonderfully near.

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Poems in English 

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• Exposure by Wilfred Owen by Wilfred Edward Salter Owen
• Futility by Wilfred Owen by Wilfred Edward Salter Owen
• Le Christianisme by Wilfred Owen by Wilfred Edward Salter Owen
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• But I Was Looking At The Permanent Stars by Wilfred Owen by Wilfred Edward Salter Owen
• I Saw His Round Mouth’s Crimson by Wilfred Owen by Wilfred Edward Salter Owen
• I know The Music (unfinished) by Wilfred Owen by Wilfred Edward Salter Owen
• Hospital Barge At Cerisy by Wilfred Owen by Wilfred Edward Salter Owen
• Has Your Soul Sipped? by Wilfred Owen by Wilfred Edward Salter Owen
• Happiness by Wilfred Owen by Wilfred Edward Salter Owen
• Greater Love by Wilfred Owen by Wilfred Edward Salter Owen
• From My Diary, July 1914 by Wilfred Owen by Wilfred Edward Salter Owen
• At A Calvary Near The Ancre by Wilfred Owen by Wilfred Edward Salter Owen
• Apologia Pro Poemate Meo by Wilfred Owen by Wilfred Edward Salter Owen
• Antaeus: [A Fragment] by Wilfred Owen by Wilfred Edward Salter Owen
• A New Heaven (To-On Active Service) by Wilfred Owen by Wilfred Edward Salter Owen
• 1914 by Wilfred Owen by Wilfred Edward Salter Owen

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