Fleurs du Mal Magazine
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Julian Grenfell
(1888 – 1915)
INTO BATTLE
The naked earth is warm with spring,
And with green grass and bursting trees
Leans to the sun’s gaze glorying,
And quivers in the sunny breeze;
And life is colour and warmth and light,
And a striving evermore for these;
And he is dead who will not fight;
And who dies fighting has increase.
The fighting man shall from the sun
Take warmth, and life from the glowing earth;
Speed with the light-foot winds to run,
And with the trees to newer birth;
And find, when fighting shall be done,
Great rest and fullness after dearth.
All the bright company of Heaven
Hold him in their high comradeship,
The Dog-Star, and the Sisters Seven,
Orion’s Belt and sworded hip.
The woodland trees that stand together,
They stand to him each one a friend;
They gently speak in the windy weather;
They guide to valley and ridge’s end.
The kestrel hovering by day,
And the little owls that call by night,
Bid him be swift and keen as they,
As keen of ear, as swift of sight.
The blackbird sings to him, ‘Brother, brother,
If this be the last song you shall sing,
Sing well, for you may not sing another;
Brother, sing.’
In dreary, doubtful, waiting hours,
Before the brazen frenzy starts,
The horses show him nobler powers;
O patient eyes, courageous hearts!
And when the burning moment breaks,
And all things else are out of mind,
And only Joy of Battle takes
Him by the throat, and makes him blind,
Through joy and blindness he shall know,
Not caring much to know, that still
Nor lead nor steel shall reach him, so
That it be not the Destined Will.
The thundering line of battle stands,
And in the air Death moan and sings;
But Day shall clasp him with strong hands,
And Night shall fold him in soft wings.
Julian Grenfell poetry
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive G-H, Greenfel, Julian
Alun Lewis
(1915 – 1944)
ALL DAY IT HAS RAINED
All day it has rained, and we on the edge of the moors
Have sprawled in our bell-tents, moody and dull as boors,
Groundsheets and blankets spread on the muddy ground
And from the first grey wakening we have found
No refuge from the skirmishing fine rain
And the wind that made the canvas heave and flap
And the taut wet guy-ropes ravel out and snap,
All day the rain has glided, wave and mist and dream,
Drenching the gorse and heather, a gossamer stream
Too light to stir the acorns that suddenly
Snatched from their cups by the wild south-westerly
Pattered against the tent and our upturned dreaming faces.
And we stretched out, unbuttoning our braces,
Smoking a Woodbine, darning dirty socks,
Reading the Sunday papers – I saw a fox
And mentioned it in the note I scribbled home;
And we talked of girls and dropping bombs on Rome,
And thought of the quiet dead and the loud celebrities
Exhorting us to slaughter, and the herded refugees;
-Yet thought softly, morosely of them, and as indifferently
As of ourselves or those whom we
For years have loved, and will again
Tomorrow maybe love; but now it is the rain
Possesses us entirely, the twilight and the rain.
And I can remember nothing dearer or more to my heart
Than the children I watched in the woods on Saturday
Shaking down burning chestnuts for the schoolyard’s merry play
Or the shaggy patient dog who followed me
By Sheet and Steep and up the wooded scree
To the Shoulder o’ Mutton where Edward Thomas brooded long
On death and beauty – till a bullet stopped his song.
Alun Lewis poetry
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive K-L, Lewis, Alun
Hans Leybold
(1892-1914)
Traum der Sehnsucht
Wie oft hab ich meine Arme ausgebreitet
In der Nacht
Und hab gelegen
Und hab gewacht
Und hab gewartet auf dich …
Du musstest einmal kommen,
Und du kamst!
Du musstest kommen
Und du nahmst
All dies einsamgraue, öde Elend fort …
Du kamst wie ein Rosenhauch
In den Raum
Und knietest an meinem Bette –
Mir war’s wie ein Traum …
Und meine Arme schlossen sich
Sanft um deine gebeugte Gestalt.
Ich küsste Stirn dir und Haar,
Wieder und wieder … und mir war,
Als entzöge dich mir eine sanfte Gewalt …
Wo bliebst du … wo …?
Hart und roh
Schlägt mein Kopf an den Boden –!
Hans Leybold poetry
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: *War Poetry Archive, Archive K-L, Expressionism, Leybold, Hans
Hans Leybold
(1892-1914)
O über allen Wolkenfahnen ...
O über allen Wolkenfahnen,
die windgetrieben sich in Bläue krallen,
stehen unverrückbar Sonnen, welche niemals fallen.
wir schwingen uns bewegt in ihre Bahnen,
sind selber Nebel und bestrahlte Dämpfe.
Verdrängen wir die nächt’gen Schatten
der Erdendinge! Lassen alle nimmersatten
Begierden. Gelöst sind alle Krämpfe,
die hart die Glieder engten.
Wir werden Äther, Luft und Wellen.
Oh, aus unsern Leibern strömen Quellen,
spritzend in das ungewohnte Licht! Wir schenkten
uns dem All! Es hat uns königlich empfangen.
Mit Sturmtrompeten und mit Regenwehen.
Wie unsre Füße über Sonnenbrücken gehen!
In unsrer Hände Kelch hat sich ein Tropfen Gold gefangen.
Hans Leybold poetry
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: *War Poetry Archive, Archive K-L, Hans Leybold, Leybold, Hans
Hans Leybold
(1892-1914)
Auch ein Nekrolog
für Christian Morgenstern
O Christian, wir glätten weinend unsre Bügelfalten:
auf Feuerleitern krochen wir mit dir in rhythmische Gerüste.
Mit dem Zement der Ironie ausfülltest du die Spalten
vermorschter Traditionen Mauer. O metaphysisches Gelüste.
O Huhn und Bahnhofshalle! Weit entfernte Latten!
Ihr Wiesel, Kiesel, mitten mang det Bachjeriesel!
Palmström, du ohngeschneuzter, den sie kastrieret hatten!
Genosse Korf, du nie banaler Wennschon – Stiesel!
(Verzeiht den Kitschton. Mich übermannte hier die Rührung.
Verzeih besonders du, Kollege Untermstriche:
schon hab ich in der harten Hand der Verse Führung
wieder; und komme mir auf meine Schliche.) –
Nun quäkt der Turmhahn geil auf Staackmanns Miste
sein Kikriki, und ist bald Ernst, bald Otto.
Verleger reißen sich die Haare aus, als ob das müßte,
und spielen mit der Perioden-Presse trotzdem Lotto.
O Christian: wie später Gotik wandgeklatschter Freske
(im spitzen Reigen härmender sebastianischer Figuren):
du paßtest nicht in unsren Krämerkram, du fleischgewordene Groteske;
nicht schmiegte sich dein edler Vollbart in die Schöße unsrer Huren!
Das Literatenleben, o du mein Christian, ist doch nicht besser
als das ärarische. (Sie dichten zur Musik von Walter Kollo!)
Wir tanzen zwischen Film und Feuilleton auf scharfem Messer . . .
Freu dich! Sei tot! Grüß mir, im Glanz geölter Locken, den Apollo!
Hans Leybold poetry
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: *War Poetry Archive, Archive K-L, Hans Leybold, Leybold, Hans
Alan Seeger
(1888-1916)
Vivien
Her eyes under their lashes were blue pools
Fringed round with lilies; her bright hair unfurled
Clothed her as sunshine clothes the summer world.
Her robes were gauzes–gold and green and gules,
All furry things flocked round her, from her hand
Nibbling their foods and fawning at her feet.
Two peacocks watched her where she made her seat
Beside a fountain in Broceliande.
Sometimes she sang. . . . Whoever heard forgot
Errand and aim, and knights at noontide here,
Riding from fabulous gestes beyond the seas,
Would follow, tranced, and seek . . . and find her not . . .
But wake that night, lost, by some woodland mere,
Powdered with stars and rimmed with silent trees.
Alan Seeger poetry
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive S-T, Seeger, Alan
Alan Seeger
(1888-1916)
Do You Remember Once . . .
I
Do you remember once, in Paris of glad faces,
The night we wandered off under the third moon’s rays
And, leaving far behind bright streets and busy places,
Stood where the Seine flowed down between its quiet quais?
The city’s voice was hushed; the placid, lustrous waters
Mirrored the walls across where orange windows burned.
Out of the starry south provoking rumors brought us
Far promise of the spring already northward turned.
And breast drew near to breast, and round its soft desire
My arm uncertain stole and clung there unrepelled.
I thought that nevermore my heart would hover nigher
To the last flower of bliss that Nature’s garden held.
There, in your beauty’s sweet abandonment to pleasure,
The mute, half-open lips and tender, wondering eyes,
I saw embodied first smile back on me the treasure
Long sought across the seas and back of summer skies.
Dear face, when courted Death shall claim my limbs and find them
Laid in some desert place, alone or where the tides
Of war’s tumultuous waves on the wet sands behind them
Leave rifts of gasping life when their red flood subsides,
Out of the past’s remote delirious abysses
Shine forth once more as then you shone,–beloved head,
Laid back in ecstasy between our blinding kisses,
Transfigured with the bliss of being so coveted.
And my sick arms will part, and though hot fever sear it,
My mouth will curve again with the old, tender flame.
And darkness will come down, still finding in my spirit
The dream of your brief love, and on my lips your name.
II
You loved me on that moonlit night long since.
You were my queen and I the charming prince
Elected from a world of mortal men.
You loved me once. . . . What pity was it, then,
You loved not Love. . . . Deep in the emerald west,
Like a returning caravel caressed
By breezes that load all the ambient airs
With clinging fragrance of the bales it bears
From harbors where the caravans come down,
I see over the roof-tops of the town
The new moon back again, but shall not see
The joy that once it had in store for me,
Nor know again the voice upon the stair,
The little studio in the candle-glare,
And all that makes in word and touch and glance
The bliss of the first nights of a romance
When will to love and be beloved casts out
The want to question or the will to doubt.
You loved me once. . . . Under the western seas
The pale moon settles and the Pleiades.
The firelight sinks; outside the night-winds moan —
The hour advances, and I sleep alone.
III
Farewell, dear heart, enough of vain despairing!
If I have erred I plead but one excuse —
The jewel were a lesser joy in wearing
That cost a lesser agony to lose.
I had not bid for beautifuller hours
Had I not found the door so near unsealed,
Nor hoped, had you not filled my arms with flowers,
For that one flower that bloomed too far afield.
If I have wept, it was because, forsaken,
I felt perhaps more poignantly than some
The blank eternity from which we waken
And all the blank eternity to come.
And I betrayed how sweet a thing and tender
(In the regret with which my lip was curled)
Seemed in its tragic, momentary splendor
My transit through the beauty of the world.
Alan Seeger poetry
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive S-T, Seeger, Alan, WAR & PEACE
Alan Seeger
(1888-1916)
Resurgam
Exiled afar from youth and happy love,
If Death should ravish my fond spirit hence
I have no doubt but, like a homing dove,
It would return to its dear residence,
And through a thousand stars find out the road
Back into earthly flesh that was its loved abode.
Alan Seeger poetry
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive S-T, Seeger, Alan
Hans Leybold
(1892-1914)
Konfusion – Ein Film
Plötzlich sprangen in den Straßen Gräber auf wie Erbsenschoten,
und jämmerliche Wesen wälzten sich heraus, die drohten
mit ihren blassgebleichten Knochen ihren Ururenkeln:
Die stoben fort und auseinander, als brennte es in ihren Schenkeln,
Pest oder Cholera im Bauch oder Jüngster Tag am Ende
(man muss doch sehn, ob man Rettung fände,
man hat sein kleines Leben lieb; die Hände,
die sich über alles strecken – –
wer weiß, ob man schlauer ist, versucht, sich zu verstecken).
Sie hopsen, springen ängstlich über Straßenbahngeleise
sie tanzen durcheinander: jeder in seiner Weise,
der eine verkriecht sich im Lokus, um sich zu retten,
der verwälzt sich tief in seine Betten,
viele fallen über die Geländer hoher Brücken,
fallen in hochgeschwollene Ströme, müssen in großen Schlücken
gelbes Wasser saufen, andere aber drücken
voll Furcht vor Unbekanntem sich an ihre Weiber.
Auf einmal greift eine unmäßig große Hand vom Himmel,
schiebt sich langsam durch chaotische Gewimmel,
plättet die Straßen als wären sie Wäsche,
greift aus dem Gewühl sich ein paar besonders fesche
Kokotten und Kavaliere, ein paar dicke Kommerzienräte,
stört in den diversen Salons die Abschiedsfete,
stürzt Börse und Kirche und Rathaus um, als mähte
sie Gras … hebt sich, verschwindet … nichts ist passiert.
Ein Gentleman sieht nach, außerordentlich blasiert.
Hans Leybold poetry
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: *War Poetry Archive, Archive K-L, Hans Leybold, Leybold, Hans
Alfred Lichtenstein
(1889-1914)
Der Athlet
Einer ging in zerrissenen Hausschuhen
Hin und her durch das kleine Zimmer,
Das er bewohnte.
Er sann über die Geschehnisse,
Von denen in dem Abendblatt berichtet war.
Und gähnte traurig, wie nur jemand gähnt,
Der viel und Seltsames gelesen hat –
Und der Gedanke überkam ihn plötzlich,
Wie wohl den Furchtsamen die Gänsehaut
Und wie das Aufstoßen den Übersättigten,
Wie Mutterwehen:
Das große Gähnen sei vielleicht ein Zeichen,
Ein Wink des Schicksals, sich zur Ruh zu legen.
Und der Gedanke ließ ihn nicht mehr los.
Und also fing er an, sich zu entkleiden …
Als er ganz nackt war, hantelte er etwas.
Alfred Lichtenstein poetry
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: *War Poetry Archive, Archive K-L, Expressionism, Lichtenstein, Alfred
Alan Seeger
(1888-1916)
Sonnet IX
Amid the florid multitude her face
Was like the full moon seen behind the lace
Of orchard boughs where clouded blossoms part
When Spring shines in the world and in the heart.
As the full-moon-beams to the ferny floor
Of summer woods through flower and foliage pour,
So to my being’s innermost recess
Flooded the light of so much loveliness;
She held as in a vase of priceless ware
The wine that over arid ways and bare
My youth was the pathetic thirsting for,
And where she moved the veil of Nature grew
Diaphanous and that radiance mantled through
Which, when I see, I tremble and adore.
Alan Seeger poetry
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive S-T, Seeger, Alan
Alan Seeger
(1888-1916)
The Deserted Garden
I know a village in a far-off land
Where from a sunny, mountain-girdled plain
With tinted walls a space 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 passers 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 grass grows,
That settled in its wavy depth one sees
Grass 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
Shine through the green and clustering 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 grass 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 passed
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 massed
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 sunshine of midsummer days;
Oft where the long straight allies intersect
And marble seats surround the open space,
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 titanic 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 asserts
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 compass of an arm’s embrace,
To burn a moment on impassioned 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 encompassing
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.
For through that frame the ivied arches make,
Wide tracts of sunny midland charm the eye,
Frequent with hamlet, grove, and lucent lake
Where the blue hills’ inverted contours lie;
Far to the east where billowy mountains break
In surf of snow against a sapphire sky,
Huge thunderheads loom up behind the ranges,
Changing from gold to pink as deepening sunset changes;
And over plain and far sierra spread
The fulgent rays of fading afternoon,
Showing each utmost peak and watershed
All clarified, each tassel and festoon
Of floating cloud embroidered overhead,
Like lotus-leaves on bluest waters strewn,
Flushing with rose, while all breathes fresh and free
In peace and amplitude and bland tranquillity.
Dear were such evenings to this gentle pair;
Love’s tide that launched on with a blast too strong
Sweeps toward the foaming reef, the hidden snare,
Baffling with fond illusion’s siren-song,
Too faint, on idle shoals, to linger there
Far from Youth’s glowing dream, bore them along,
With purple sail and steered by seraph hands
To isles resplendent in the sunset of romance.
And out of this old house a flowery fane,
A bridal bower, a pearly pleasure-dome,
They built, and furnished it with gold and grain,
And bade all spirits of beauty hither come,
And winged Love to enter with his train
And bless their pillow, and in this his home
Make them his priests as Hero was of yore
In her sweet girlhood by the blue Dardanian shore.
Tree-ferns, therefore, and potted palms they brought,
Tripods and urns in rare and curious taste,
Polychrome chests and cabinets inwrought
With pearl and ivory etched and interlaced;
Pendant brocades with massive braid were caught,
And chain-slung, oriental lamps so placed
To light the lounger on some low divan,
Sunken in swelling down and silks from Hindustan.
And there was spread, upon the ample floors,
Work of the Levantine’s laborious loom,
Such as by Euxine or Ionian shores
Carpets the dim seraglio’s scented gloom.
Each morn renewed, the garden’s flowery stores
Blushed in fair vases, ochre and peach-bloom,
And little birds through wicker doors left wide
Flew in to trill a space from the green world outside.
And there was many a dainty attitude,
Bronze and eburnean. All but disarrayed,
Here in eternal doubt sweet Psyche stood
Fain of the bath’s delight, yet still afraid
Lest aught in that palatial solitude
Lurked of most menace to a helpless maid.
Therefore forever faltering she stands,
Nor yet the last loose fold slips rippling from her hands.
Close by upon a beryl column, clad
In the fresh flower of adolescent grace,
They set the dear Bithynian shepherd lad,
The nude Antinous. That gentle face,
Forever beautiful, forever sad,
Shows but one aspect, moon-like, to our gaze,
Yet Fancy pictures how those lips could smile
At revelries in Rome, and banquets on the Nile.
And there were shapes of Beauty myriads more,
Clustering their rosy bridal bed around,
Whose scented breadth a silken fabric wore
Broidered with peacock hues on creamiest ground,
Fit to have graced the barge that Cydnus bore
Or Venus’ bed in her enchanted mound,
While pillows swelled in stuffs of Orient dyes,
All broidered with strange fruits and birds of Paradise.
‘Twas such a bower as Youth has visions of,
Thither with one fair spirit to retire,
Lie upon rose-leaves, sleep and wake with Love
And feast on kisses to the heart’s desire;
Where by a casement opening on a grove,
Wide to the wood-winds and the sweet birds’ choir,
A girl might stand and gaze into green boughs,
Like Credhe at the window of her golden house.
Or most like Vivien, the enchanting fay,
Where with her friend, in the strange tower they planned,
She lies and dreams eternity away,
Above the treetops in Broceliande,
Sometimes at twilight when the woods are gray
And wolf-packs howl far out across the lande,
Waking to love, while up behind the trees
The large midsummer moon lifts–even so loved these.
For here, their pleasure was to come and sit
Oft when the sun sloped midway to the west,
Watching with sweet enjoyment interknit
The long light slant across the green earth’s breast,
And clouds upon the ranges opposite,
Rolled up into a gleaming thundercrest,
Topple and break and fall in purple rain,
And mist of summer showers trail out across the plain.
Whereon the shafts of ardent light, far-flung
Across the luminous azure overhead,
Ofttimes in arcs of transient beauty hung
The fragmentary rainbow’s green and red.
Joy it was here to love and to be young,
To watch the sun sink to his western bed,
And streaming back out of their flaming core
The vesperal aurora’s glorious banners soar.
Tinging each altitude of heaven in turn,
Those fiery rays would sweep. The cumuli
That peeped above the mountain-tops would burn
Carmine a space; the cirrus-whorls on high,
More delicate than sprays of maiden fern,
Streak with pale rose the peacock-breasted sky,
Then blanch. As water-lilies fold at night,
Sank back into themselves those plumes of fervid light.
And they would watch the first faint stars appear,
The blue East blend with the blue hills below,
As lovers when their shuddering bliss draws near
Into one pulse of fluid rapture grow.
New fragrance on the freshening atmosphere
Would steal with evening, and the sunset glow
Draw deeper down into the wondrous west
Round vales of Proserpine and islands of the blest.
So dusk would come and mingle lake and shore,
The snow-peaks fade to frosty opaline,
To pearl the domed clouds the mountains bore,
Where late the sun’s effulgent fire had been —
Showing as darkness deepened more and more
The incandescent lightnings flare within,
And Night that furls the lily in the glen
And twines impatient arms would fall, and then–and then . . .
Sometimes the peasant, coming late from town
With empty panniers on his little drove
Past the old lookout when the Northern Crown
Glittered with Cygnus through the scented grove,
Would hear soft noise of lute-strings wafted down
And voices singing through the leaves above
Those songs that well from the warm heart that woos
At balconies in Merida or Vera Cruz.
And he would pause under the garden wall,
Caught in the spell of that voluptuous strain,
With all the sultry South in it, and all
Its importunity of love and pain;
And he would wait till the last passionate fall
Died on the night, and all was still again, —
Then to his upland village wander home,
Marvelling whence that flood of elfin song might come.
O lyre that Love’s white holy hands caress,
Youth, from thy bosom welled their passionate lays —
Sweet opportunity for happiness
So brief, so passing beautiful–O days,
When to the heart’s divine indulgences
All earth in smiling ministration pays —
Thine was the source whose plenitude, past over,
What prize shall rest to pluck, what secret to discover!
The wake of color that follows her when May
Walks on the hills loose-haired and daisy-crowned,
The deep horizons of a summer’s day,
Fair cities, and the pleasures that abound
Where music calls, and crowds in bright array
Gather by night to find and to be found;
What were these worth or all delightful things
Without thine eyes to read their true interpretings!
For thee the mountains open glorious gates,
To thee white arms put out from orient skies,
Earth, like a jewelled bride for one she waits,
Decks but to be delicious in thine eyes,
Thou guest of honor for one day, whose fetes
Eternity has travailed to devise;
Ah, grace them well in the brief hour they last!
Another’s turn prepares, another follows fast.
Yet not without one fond memorial
Let my sun set who found the world so fair!
Frail verse, when Time the singer’s coronal
Has rent, and stripped the rose-leaves from his hair,
Be thou my tablet on the temple wall!
Among the pious testimonials there,
Witness how sweetly on my heart as well
The miracles of dawn and starry evening fell!
Speak of one then who had the lust to feel,
And, from the hues that far horizons take,
And cloud and sunset, drank the wild appeal,
Too deep to live for aught but life’s sweet sake,
Whose only motive was the will to kneel
Where Beauty’s purest benediction spake,
Who only coveted what grove and field
And sunshine and green Earth and tender arms could yield —
A nympholept, through pleasant days and drear
Seeking his faultless adolescent dream,
A pilgrim down the paths that disappear
In mist and rainbows on the world’s extreme,
A helpless voyager who all too near
The mouth of Life’s fair flower-bordered stream,
Clutched at Love’s single respite in his need
More than the drowning swimmer clutches at a reed —
That coming one whose feet in other days
Shall bleed like mine for ever having, more
Than any purpose, felt the need to praise
And seek the angelic image to adore,
In love with Love, its wonderful, sweet ways
Counting what most makes life worth living for,
That so some relic may be his to see
How I loved these things too and they were dear to me.
I sometimes think a conscious happiness
Mantles through all the rose’s sentient vine
When summer winds with myriad calyces
Of bloom its clambering height incarnadine;
I sometimes think that cleaving lips, no less,
And limbs that crowned desires at length entwine
Are nerves through which that being drinks delight,
Whose frame is the green Earth robed round with day and night.
And such were theirs: the traveller without,
Pausing at night under the orchard trees,
Wondered and crossed himself in holy doubt,
For through their song and in the murmuring breeze
It seemed angelic choirs were all about
Mingling in universal harmonies,
As though, responsive to the chords they woke,
All Nature into sweet epithalamium broke.
And still they think a spirit haunts the place:
‘Tis said, when Night has drawn her jewelled pall
And through the branches twinkling fireflies trace
Their mimic constellations, if it fall
That one should see the moon rise through the lace
Of blossomy boughs above the garden wall,
That surely would he take great ill thereof
And famish in a fit of unexpressive love.
But this I know not, for what time the wain
Was loosened and the lily’s petal furled,
Then I would rise, climb the old wall again,
And pausing look forth on the sundown world,
Scan the wide reaches of the wondrous plain,
The hamlet sites where settling smoke lay curled,
The poplar-bordered roads, and far away
Fair snowpeaks colored with the sun’s last ray.
Waves of faint sound would pulsate from afar —
Faint song and preludes of the summer night;
Deep in the cloudless west the evening star
Hung ‘twixt the orange and the emerald light;
From the dark vale where shades crepuscular
Dimmed the old grove-girt belfry glimmering white,
Throbbing, as gentlest breezes rose or fell,
Came the sweet invocation of the evening bell.
Alan Seeger poetry
fleursdumal.nl magazine
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