Poems of Alan Seeger Part 5

Again and again in the "Last Poems"--notably in "Maktoob"

with its tribute to

The resignation and the calm And wisdom of the East,

he returns to the note of fatalism. Here he has not only the wisdom of the East but the logic of the West on his side.

Necessity is as incontrovertible to thought as it is incredible to feeling.

But in the potent illusion of free-will (if illusion it be) rests all morality and all the admiration that we feel for good and evil deeds.

Not even at Alan Seeger's bidding can we quite persuade ourselves that, when he took up arms for France, he was exercising no brave, no generous choice, but was the conscript of Destiny.

William Archer.

Poems by Alan Seeger

Juvenilia

1914

An Ode to Natural Beauty

There is a power whose inspiration fills Nature's fair fabric, sun- and star-inwrought, Like airy dew ere any drop distils, Like perfume in the laden flower, like aught Unseen which interfused throughout the whole Becomes its quickening pulse and principle and soul.

Now when, the drift of old desire renewing, Warm tides flow northward over valley and field, When half-forgotten sound and scent are wooing From their deep-chambered recesses long sealed Such memories as breathe once more Of childhood and the happy hues it wore, Now, with a fervor that has never been In years gone by, it stirs me to respond, -- Not as a force whose fountains are within The faculties of the percipient mind, Subject with them to darkness and decay, But something absolute, something beyond, Oft met like tender orbs that seem to peer From pale horizons, luminous behind Some fringe of tinted cloud at close of day; And in this flood of the reviving year, When to the loiterer by sylvan streams, Deep in those cares that make Youth loveliest, Nature in every common aspect seems To comment on the burden in his breast -- The joys he covets and the dreams he dreams -- One then with all beneath the radiant skies That laughs with him or sighs, It courses through the lilac-scented air, A blessing on the fields, a wonder everywhere.

Spirit of Beauty, whose sweet impulses, Flung like the rose of dawn across the sea, Alone can flush the exalted consciousness With shafts of sensible divinity -- Light of the World, essential loveliness: Him whom the Muse hath made thy votary Not from her paths and gentle precepture Shall vulgar ends engage, nor break the spell That taught him first to feel thy secret charms And o'er the earth, obedient to their lure, Their sweet surprise and endless miracle, To follow ever with insatiate arms.

On summer afternoons, When from the blue horizon to the sh.o.r.e, Casting faint silver pathways like the moon's Across the Ocean's gla.s.sy, mottled floor, Far clouds uprear their gleaming battlements Drawn to the crest of some bleak eminence, When autumn twilight fades on the sere hill And autumn winds are still; To watch the East for some emerging sign, Wintry Capella or the Pleiades Or that great huntsman with the golden gear; Ravished in hours like these Before thy universal shrine To feel the invoked presence hovering near, He stands enthusiastic. Star-lit hours Spent on the roads of wandering solitude Have set their sober impress on his brow, And he, with harmonies of wind and wood And torrent and the tread of mountain showers, Has mingled many a dedicative vow That holds him, till thy last delight be known, Bound in thy service and in thine alone.

I, too, among the visionary throng Who choose to follow where thy pathway leads, Have sold my patrimony for a song, And donned the simple, lowly pilgrim's weeds.

From that first image of beloved walls, Deep-bowered in umbrage of ancestral trees, Where earliest thy sweet enchantment falls, Tingeing a child's fantastic reveries With radiance so fair it seems to be Of heavens just lost the lingering evidence From that first dawn of roseate infancy, So long beneath thy tender influence My breast has thrilled. As oft for one brief second The veil through which those infinite offers beckoned Has seemed to tremble, letting through Some swift intolerable view Of vistas past the sense of mortal seeing, So oft, as one whose stricken eyes might see In ferny dells the rustic deity, I stood, like him, possessed, and all my being, Flooded an instant with unwonted light, Quivered with cosmic pa.s.sion; whether then On woody pa.s.s or glistening mountain-height I walked in fellows.h.i.+p with winds and clouds, Whether in cities and the throngs of men, A curious saunterer through friendly crowds, Enamored of the glance in pa.s.sing eyes, Unuttered salutations, mute replies, -- In every character where light of thine Has shed on earthly things the hue of things divine I sought eternal Loveliness, and seeking, If ever transport crossed my brow bespeaking Such fire as a prophetic heart might feel Where simple wors.h.i.+p blends in fervent zeal, It was the faith that only love of thee Needed in human hearts for Earth to see Surpa.s.sed the vision poets have held dear Of joy diffused in most communion here; That whomsoe'er thy visitations warmed, Lover of thee in all thy rays informed, Needed no difficulter discipline To seek his right to happiness within Than, sensible of Nature's loveliness, To yield him to the generous impulses By such a sentiment evoked. The thought, Bright Spirit, whose illuminings I sought, That thou unto thy wors.h.i.+pper might be An all-sufficient law, abode with me, Importing something more than unsubstantial dreams To vigils by lone sh.o.r.es and walks by murmuring streams.

Youth's flowers like childhood's fade and are forgot.

Fame twines a tardy crown of yellowing leaves.

How swift were disillusion, were it not That thou art steadfast where all else deceives!

Solace and Inspiration, Power divine That by some mystic sympathy of thine, When least it waits and most hath need of thee, Can startle the dull spirit suddenly With grandeur welled from unsuspected springs, -- Long as the light of fulgent evenings, When from warm showers the pearly shades disband And sunset opens o'er the humid land, Shows thy veiled immanence in orient skies, -- Long as pale mist and opalescent dyes Hung on far isle or vanis.h.i.+ng mountain-crest, Fields of remote enchantment can suggest So sweet to wander in it matters nought, They hold no place but in impa.s.sioned thought, Long as one draught from a clear sky may be A scented luxury; Be thou my wors.h.i.+p, thou my sole desire, Thy paths my pilgrimage, my sense a lyre Aeolian for thine every breath to stir; Oft when her full-blown periods recur, To see the birth of day's transparent moon Far from cramped walls may fading afternoon Find me expectant on some rising lawn; Often depressed in dewy gra.s.s at dawn, Me, from sweet slumber underneath green boughs, Ere the stars flee may forest matins rouse, Afoot when the great sun in amber floods Pours horizontal through the steaming woods And windless fumes from early chimneys start And many a c.o.c.k-crow cheers the traveller's heart Eager for aught the coming day afford In hills untopped and valleys unexplored.

Give me the white road into the world's ends, Lover of roadside hazard, roadside friends, Loiterer oft by upland farms to gaze On ample prospects, lost in glimmering haze At noon, or where down odorous dales twilit, Filled with low thundering of the mountain stream, Over the plain where blue seas border it The torrid coast-towns gleam.

I have fared too far to turn back now; my breast Burns with the l.u.s.t for splendors unrevealed, Stars of midsummer, clouds out of the west, Pallid horizons, winds that valley and field Laden with joy, be ye my refuge still!

What though distress and poverty a.s.sail!

Though other voices chide, yours never will.

The grace of a blue sky can never fail.

Powers that my childhood with a spell so sweet, My youth with visions of such glory nursed, Ye have beheld, nor ever seen my feet On any venture set, but 'twas the thirst For Beauty willed them, yea, whatever be The faults I wanted wings to rise above; I am cheered yet to think how steadfastly I have been loyal to the love of Love!

The Deserted Garden

I know a village in a far-off land Where from a sunny, mountain-girdled plain With tinted walls a s.p.a.ce on either hand And fed by many an olive-darkened lane The high-road mounts, and thence a silver band Through vineyard slopes above and rolling grain, Winds off to that dim corner of the skies Where behind sunset hills a stately city lies.

Here, among trees whose overhanging shade Strews petals on the little droves below, Pattering townward in the morning weighed With greens from many an upland garden-row, Runs an old wall; long centuries have frayed Its scalloped edge, and pa.s.sers to and fro Heard never from beyond its crumbling height Sweet laughter ring at noon or plaintive song at night.

But here where little lizards bask and blink The tendrils of the trumpet-vine have run, At whose red bells the humming bird to drink Stops oft before his garden feast is done; And rose-geraniums, with that tender pink That cloud-banks borrow from the setting sun, Have covered part of this old wall, entwined With fair plumbago, blue as evening heavens behind.

And crowning other parts the wild white rose Rivals the honey-suckle with the bees.

Above the old abandoned orchard shows And all within beneath the dense-set trees, Tall and luxuriant the rank gra.s.s grows, That settled in its wavy depth one sees Gra.s.s melt in leaves, the mossy trunks between, Down fading avenues of implicated green;

Wherein no lack of flowers the verdurous night With stars and pearly nebula o'erlay; Azalea-boughs half rosy and half white s.h.i.+ne through the green and cl.u.s.tering apple-spray, Such as the fairy-queen before her knight Waved in old story, luring him away Where round lost isles Hesperian billows break Or towers loom up beneath the clear, translucent lake;

And under the deep gra.s.s blue hare-bells hide, And myrtle plots with dew-fall ever wet, Gay tiger-lilies flammulate and pied, Sometime on pathway borders neatly set, Now blossom through the brake on either side, Where heliotrope and weedy mignonette, With vines in bloom and flower-bearing trees, Mingle their incense all to swell the perfumed breeze,

That sprung like Hermes from his natal cave In some blue rampart of the curving West, Comes up the valleys where green cornfields wave, Ravels the cloud about the mountain crest, Breathes on the lake till gentle ripples pave Its placid floor; at length a long-loved guest, He steals across this plot of pleasant ground, Waking the vocal leaves to a sweet vernal sound.

Here many a day right gladly have I sped, Content amid the wavy plumes to lie, And through the woven branches overhead Watch the white, ever-wandering clouds go by, And soaring birds make their dissolving bed Far in the azure depths of summer sky, Or nearer that small huntsman of the air, The fly-catcher, dart nimbly from his leafy lair;

Pillowed at ease to hear the merry tune Of mating warblers in the boughs above And shrill cicadas whom the hottest noon Keeps not from drowsy song; the mourning dove Pours down the murmuring grove his plaintive croon That like the voice of visionary love Oft have I risen to seek through this green maze (Even as my feet thread now the great world's garden-ways);

And, parting tangled bushes as I pa.s.sed Down beechen alleys beautiful and dim, Perhaps by some deep-shaded pool at last My feet would pause, where goldfish poise and swim, And snowy callas' velvet cups are ma.s.sed Around the mossy, fern-encircled brim.

Here, then, that magic summoning would cease, Or sound far off again among the orchard trees.

And here where the blanched lilies of the vale And violets and yellow star-flowers teem, And pink and purple hyacinths exhale Their heavy fume, once more to drowse and dream My head would sink, from many an olden tale Drawing imagination's fervid theme, Or haply peopling this enchanting spot Only with fair creations of fantastic thought.

For oft I think, in years long since gone by, That gentle hearts dwelt here and gentle hands Stored all this bowery bliss to beautify The paradise of some unsung romance; Here, safe from all except the loved one's eye, 'Tis sweet to think white limbs were wont to glance, Well pleased to wanton like the flowers and share Their simple loveliness with the enamored air.

Thrice dear to them whose votive fingers decked The altars of First Love were these green ways, -- These lawns and verdurous brakes forever flecked With the warm suns.h.i.+ne of midsummer days; Oft where the long straight allies intersect And marble seats surround the open s.p.a.ce, Where a tiled pool and sculptured fountain stand, Hath Evening found them seated, silent, hand in hand.

When twilight deepened, in the gathering shade Beneath that old t.i.tanic cypress row, Whose sombre vault and towering colonnade Dwarfed the enfolded forms that moved below, Oft with close steps these happy lovers strayed, Till down its darkening aisle the sunset glow Grew less and patterning the garden floor Faint flakes of filtering moonlight mantled more and more.

And the strange tempest that a touch imparts Through the mid fibre of the molten frame, When the sweet flesh in early youth a.s.serts Its heyday verve and little hints enflame, Disturbed them as they walked; from their full hearts Welled the soft word, and many a tender name Strove on their lips as breast to breast they strained And the deep joy they drank seemed never, never drained.

Love's soul that is the depth of starry skies Set in the splendor of one upturned face To beam adorably through half-closed eyes; Love's body where the breadth of summer days And all the beauty earth and air comprise Come to the compa.s.s of an arm's embrace, To burn a moment on impa.s.sioned lips And yield intemperate joy to quivering finger-tips,

They knew; and here where morning-glories cling Round carven forms of carefullest artifice, They made a bower where every outward thing Should comment on the cause of their own bliss; With flowers of liveliest hue encompa.s.sing That flower that the beloved body is -- That rose that for the banquet of Love's bee Has budded all the aeons of past eternity.

But their choice seat was where the garden wall, Crowning a little summit, far and near, Looks over tufted treetops onto all The pleasant outer country; rising here From rustling foliage where cuckoos call On summer evenings, stands a belvedere, Buff-hued, of antique plaster, overrun With flowering vines and weatherworn by rain and sun.

Still round the turrets of this antique tower The bougainvillea hangs a crimson crown, Wistaria-vines and clematis in flower, Wreathing the lower surface further down, Hide the old plaster in a very shower Of motley blossoms like a broidered gown.

Outside, ascending from the garden grove, A crumbling stairway winds to the one room above.

And whoso mounts by this dismantled stair Finds the old pleasure-hall, long disarrayed, Brick-tiled and raftered, and the walls foursquare Ringed all about with a twofold arcade.

Backward dense branches intercept the glare Of afternoon with eucalyptus shade; Eastward the level valley-plains expand, Sweet as a queen's survey of her own Fairyland.