Poems by Alan Seeger Part 15

Broceliande

Broceliande! in the perilous beauty of silence and menacing shade, Thou art set on the sh.o.r.es of the sea down the haze of horizons untravelled, unscanned.

Untroubled, untouched with the woes of this world are the moon-marshalled hosts that invade Broceliande.

Only at dusk, when lavender clouds in the orient twilight disband, Vanis.h.i.+ng where all the blue afternoon they have drifted in solemn parade, Sometimes a whisper comes down on the wind from the valleys of Fairyland ----

Sometimes an echo most mournful and faint like the horn of a huntsman strayed, Faint and forlorn, half drowned in the murmur of foliage fitfully fanned, Breathes in a burden of nameless regret till I startle, disturbed and affrayed: Broceliande -- Broceliande -- Broceliande. . . .

Lyonesse

In Lyonesse was beauty enough, men say: Long Summer loaded the orchards to excess, And fertile lowlands lengthening far away, In Lyonesse.

Came a term to that land's old favoredness: Past the sea-walls, crumbled in thundering spray, Rolled the green waves, ravening, merciless.

Through bearded boughs immobile in cool decay, Where sea-bloom covers corroding palaces, The mermaid glides with a curious glance to-day, In Lyonesse.

t.i.thonus

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 G.o.ddess 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 h.o.a.ry 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 s.h.i.+ning doors. But he, Deathless by Jove's compa.s.sionless 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, m.u.f.fled moaning of the sea, Even so his voice flows on unceasingly, -- Lisping sweet names of pa.s.sion overblown, Breaking with dull, persistent undertone The breathless silence that forever broods Round those colossal, l.u.s.trous solitudes.

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

Change harbors not in those eternal halls And tranquil chamber where t.i.thonus 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 s.p.a.cious 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.

An Ode to Antares

At dusk, when lowlands where dark waters glide Robe in gray mist, and through the greening hills The hoot-owl calls his mate, and whippoorwills Clamor from every copse and orchard-side, I watched the red star rising in the East, And while his fellows of the flaming sign From prisoning daylight more and more released, Lift their pale lamps, and, climbing higher, higher, Out of their locks the waters of the Line Shaking in clouds of phosph.o.r.escent fire, Rose in the splendor of their curving flight, Their dolphin leap across the austral night, From windows southward opening on the sea What eyes, I wondered, might be watching, too, Orbed in some blossom-laden balcony.

Where, from the garden to the rail above, As though a lover's greeting to his love Should borrow body and form and hue And tower in torrents of floral flame, The crimson bougainvillea grew, What starlit brow uplifted to the same Majestic regress of the summering sky, What ultimate thing--hushed, holy, throned as high Above the currents that tarnish and profane As silver summits are whose pure repose No curious eyes disclose Nor any footfalls stain, But round their beauty on azure evenings Only the oreads go on gauzy wings, Only the oreads troop with dance and song And airy beings in rainbow mists who throng Out of those wonderful worlds that lie afar Betwixt the outmost cloud and the nearest star.

Like the moon, sanguine in the orient night s.h.i.+nes the red flower in her beautiful hair.

Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s are distant islands of delight Upon a sea where all is soft and fair.

Those robes that make a silken sheath For each lithe att.i.tude that flows beneath, Shrouding in scented folds sweet warmths and tumid flowers, Call them far clouds that half emerge Beyond a sunset ocean's utmost verge, Hiding in purple shade and downpour of soft showers Enchanted isles by mortal foot untrod, And there in humid dells resplendent orchids nod; There always from serene horizons blow Soul-easing gales and there all spice-trees grow That Phoenix robbed to line his fragrant nest Each hundred years in Araby the Blest.

Star of the South that now through orient mist At nightfall off Tampico or Belize Greetest the sailor rising from those seas Where first in me, a fond romanticist, The tropic sunset's bloom on cloudy piles Cast out industrious cares with dreams of fabulous isles -- Thou lamp of the swart lover to his tryst, O'er planted acres at the jungle's rim Reeking with orange-flower and tuberose, Dear to his eyes thy ruddy splendor glows Among the palms where beauty waits for him; Bliss too thou bringst to our greening North, Red scintillant through cherry-blossom rifts, Herald of summer-heat, and all the gifts And all the joys a summer can bring forth ----

Be thou my star, for I have made my aim To follow loveliness till autumn-strown Sunder the sinews of this flower-like frame As rose-leaves sunder when the bud is blown.

Ay, sooner spirit and sense disintegrate Than reconcilement to a common fate Strip the enchantment from a world so dressed In hues of high romance. I cannot rest While aught of beauty in any path untrod Swells into bloom and spreads sweet charms abroad Unwors.h.i.+pped of my love. I cannot see In Life's profusion and pa.s.sionate brevity How hearts enamored of life can strain too much In one long tension to hear, to see, to touch.

Now on each rustling night-wind from the South Far music calls; beyond the harbor mouth Each outbound argosy with sail unfurled May point the path through this fortuitous world That holds the heart from its desire. Away!

Where tinted coast-towns gleam at close of day, Where squares are sweet with bells, or sh.o.r.es thick set With bloom and bower, with mosque and minaret.

Blue peaks loom up beyond the coast-plains here, White roads wind up the dales and disappear, By silvery waters in the plains afar Glimmers the inland city like a star, With gilded gates and sunny spires ablaze And burnished domes half-seen through luminous haze, Lo, with what opportunity Earth teems!

How like a fair its ample beauty seems!

Fluttering with flags its proud pavilions rise: What bright bazaars, what marvelous merchandise, Down seething alleys what melodious din, What clamor importuning from every booth!

At Earth's great market where Joy is trafficked in Buy while thy purse yet swells with golden Youth!

Translations

Dante. Inferno, Canto XXVI

Florence, rejoice! For thou o'er land and sea So spread'st thy pinions that the fame of thee Hath reached no less into the depths of h.e.l.l.

So n.o.ble were the five I found to dwell Therein--thy sons--whence shame accrues to me And no great praise is thine; but if it be That truth unveil in dreamings before dawn, Then is the vengeful hour not far withdrawn When Prato shall exult within her walls To see thy suffering. Whate'er befalls, Let it come soon, since come it must, for later, Each year would see my grief for thee the greater.

We left; and once more up the craggy side By the blind steps of our descent, my guide, Remounting, drew me on. So we pursued The rugged path through that steep solitude, Where rocks and splintered fragments strewed the land So thick, that foot availed not without hand.

Grief filled me then, and still great sorrow stirs My heart as oft as memory recurs To what I saw; that more and more I rein My natural powers, and curb them lest they strain Where Virtue guide not,--that if some good star, Or better thing, have made them what they are, That good I may not grudge, nor turn to ill.

As when, reclining on some verdant hill -- What season the hot sun least veils his power That lightens all, and in that gloaming hour The fly resigns to the shrill gnat--even then, As rustic, looking down, sees, o'er the glen, Vineyard, or tilth where lies his husbandry, Fireflies innumerable sparkle: so to me, Come where its mighty depth unfolded, straight With flames no fewer seemed to scintillate The shades of the eighth pit. And as to him Whose wrongs the bears avenged, dim and more dim Elijah's chariot seemed, when to the skies Uprose the heavenly steeds; and still his eyes Strained, following them, till naught remained in view But flame, like a thin cloud against the blue: So here, the melancholy gulf within, Wandered these flames, concealing each its sin, Yet each, a fiery integument, Wrapped round a sinner.

On the bridge intent, Gazing I stood, and grasped its flinty side, Or else, unpushed, had fallen. And my guide, Observing me so moved, spake, saying: "Behold Where swathed each in his unconsuming fold, The spirits lie confined." Whom answering, "Master," I said, "thy words a.s.surance bring To that which I already had supposed; And I was fain to ask who lies enclosed In the embrace of that dividing fire, Which seems to curl above the fabled pyre, Where with his twin-born brother, fiercely hated, Eteocles was laid." He answered, "Mated In punishment as once in wrath they were, Ulysses there and Diomed incur The eternal pains; there groaning they deplore The ambush of the horse, which made the door For Rome's imperial seed to issue: there In anguish too they wail the fatal snare Whence dead Deidamia still must grieve, Reft of Achilles; likewise they receive Due penalty for the Palladium."

"Master," I said, "if in that martyrdom The power of human speech may still be theirs, I pray--and think it worth a thousand prayers -- That, till this horned flame be come more nigh, We may abide here; for thou seest that I With great desire incline to it." And he: "Thy prayer deserves great praise; which willingly I grant; but thou refrain from speaking; leave That task to me; for fully I conceive What thing thou wouldst, and it might fall perchance That these, being Greeks, would scorn thine utterance."

So when the flame had come where time and place Seemed not unfitting to my guide with grace To question, thus he spoke at my desire: "O ye that are two souls within one fire, If in your eyes some merit I have won -- Merit, or more or less--for tribute done When in the world I framed my lofty verse: Move not; but fain were we that one rehea.r.s.e By what strange fortunes to his death he came."

The elder crescent of the antique flame Began to wave, as in the upper air A flame is tempest-tortured, here and there Tossing its angry height, and in its sound As human speech it suddenly had found, Rolled forth a voice of thunder, saying: "When, The twelvemonth past in Circe's halls, again I left Gaeta's strand (ere thither came Aeneas, and had given it that name) Not love of son, nor filial reverence, Nor that affection that might recompense The weary vigil of Penelope, Could so far quench the hot desire in me To prove more wonders of the teeming earth, -- Of human frailty and of manly worth.

In one small bark, and with the faithful band That all awards had shared of Fortune's hand, I launched once more upon the open main.

Both sh.o.r.es I visited as far as Spain, -- Sardinia, and Morocco, and what more The midland sea upon its bosom wore.

The hour of our lives was growing late When we arrived before that narrow strait Where Hercules had set his bounds to show That there Man's foot shall pause, and further none shall go.

Borne with the gale past Seville on the right, And on the left now swept by Ceuta's site, 'Brothers,' I cried, 'that into the far West Through perils numberless are now addressed, In this brief respite that our mortal sense Yet hath, shrink not from new experience; But sailing still against the setting sun, Seek we new worlds where Man has never won Before us. Ponder your proud destinies: Born were ye not like brutes for swinish ease, But virtue and high knowledge to pursue.'

My comrades with such zeal did I imbue By these brief words, that scarcely could I then Have turned them from their purpose; so again We set out p.o.o.p against the morning sky, And made our oars as wings wherewith to fly Into the Unknown. And ever from the right Our course deflecting, in the balmy night All southern stars we saw, and ours so low, That scarce above the sea-marge it might show.

So five revolving periods the soft, Pale light had robbed of Cynthia, and as oft Replenished since our start, when far and dim Over the misty ocean's utmost rim, Rose a great mountain, that for very height Pa.s.sed any I had seen. Boundless delight Filled us--alas, and quickly turned to dole: For, springing from our scarce-discovered goal, A whirlwind struck the s.h.i.+p; in circles three It whirled us helpless in the eddying sea; High on the fourth the fragile stern uprose, The bow drove down, and, as Another chose, Over our heads we heard the surging billows close."

Ariosto. Orlando Furioso, Canto X, 91-99

Ruggiero, to amaze the British host, And wake more wonder in their wondering ranks, The bridle of his winged courser loosed, And clapped his spurs into the creature's flanks; High in the air, even to the topmost banks Of crudded cloud, uprose the flying horse, And now above the Welsh, and now the Manx, And now across the sea he shaped his course, Till gleaming far below lay Erin's emerald sh.o.r.es.