  Poetry
This week: Edited by: Stormy Lady  
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| This is poetry from the minds and the hearts of poets on Writing.Com. The poems I am going to be exposing throughout this newsletter are ones that I have found to be, very visual, mood setting and uniquely done. Stormy Lady |
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Do You Remember Once . . .
by Alan Seeger
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.
The Old Lowe House, Staten Island
by Alan Seeger
Another prospect pleased the builder's eye,
And Fashion tenanted (where Fashion wanes)
Here in the sorrowful suburban lanes
When first these gables rose against the sky.
Relic of a romantic taste gone by,
This stately monument alone remains,
Vacant, with lichened walls and window-panes
Blank as the windows of a skull. But I,
On evenings when autumnal winds have stirred
In the porch-vines, to this gray oracle
Have laid a wondering ear and oft-times heard,
As from the hollow of a stranded shell,
Old voices echoing (or my fancy erred)
Things indistinct, but not insensible.
Alan Seeger was born on June 22, 1888 in New York. His family moved to Staten Island shortly after Alan was born. Alan had a brother Charles Seeger. When Alan turned 10 his family moved them again to Mexico for a couple of years. At the age of fourteen Seeger returned to New York to attend school at Hackley School in Tarrytown. Upon completing his education at Hackley Seeger went to Harvard College. As a student he became an editor for Harvard Monthly.
After graduating he lived between Greenwood Village and Paris for the next few years. Writing and living a carefree lifestyle. In August of 1914, Seeger enlisted in the French Foreign Legion to fight the Germans in WWI. Seeger was posted at the western front where he wrote many letters and kept a dairy. During the Battle of the Somme at Belloy-en-Santerre Seeger was critically injured while advancing on the German lines and on July 4, 1916 at the age of 28, Seeger died from his wounds. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Medaille Militaire after his death.
In 1917 Seegers fisrt book Poems was published and was considered unsuccessful. The book contained one of Seeger’s more famous poem “I Have a Rendezvous with Death.” Seeger’s second book Letters and Diary of Alan Seeger was also published later that same year. Then in 2001 Alan Seeger: the complete works was published containing partial poems from his first book and the content of his second book.
Rendezvous
I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air--
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.
It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath--
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.
God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear . . .
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.
Thank you all!
Stormy Lady
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The winner of "Stormy's poetry newsletter & contest" [ASR] is:
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#1541508 by Not Available. |
She looked so bright and happy when she sat upon that chair
A novel carefully in her lap and flowers in her hair
Hard rain streamed down the windowpane, along with pale light
That she caught between the pages before the gray gave way to night
But seasons passed in quick succession, the girl went out to play
And heavy snow, with death in chill, stole her breath away
Never would she read again in a fire’s glow and heat
Untimely rest had taken her to her eternal sleep
But above the fireplace, a book’s still on her knees
The rain still runs, the light’s still dim, she smiles at what she reads
She sits inside the golden frame so still without complaint
A portrait of a lovely girl, her frozen life in paint
Honorable mention:
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#1540358 by Not Available. |
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Poetry: April 15, 2009 Issue [#3001]
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