On a Theme in the Greek Anthology

Thy petals yet are closely curled,
Rose of the world,
Around their scented, golden core;
Nor yet has Summer purpled o'er
Thy tender clusters that begin
To swell within
The dewy vine-leaves' early screen
Of sheltering green.

O hearts that are Love's helpless prey,
While yet you may,
Fly, ere the shaft is on the string!
The fire that now is smouldering
Shall be the conflagration soon
Whose paths are strewn
With torment of blanched lips and eyes
That agonize.

Alan Seeger

Alan Seeger was an American poet born on June 22, 1888, in New York City. He is best known for his poem 'I Have a Rendezvous with Death,' which gained popularity during World War I. Seeger was a Harvard University alumnus and moved to Paris to pursue his literary ambitions. When World War I broke out, he enlisted in the French Foreign Legion and was killed in action on July 4, 1916, during the Battle of the Somme. Seeger's poetry, marked by its romantic and idealistic tone, continues to be celebrated for its emotional depth and poignant reflections on mortality.

Alan Seeger

Liebestod

Alan Seeger, Simple Poetry

Sonnet VII

Alan Seeger, Simple Poetry

The Aisne (1914-15)

Alan Seeger, Simple Poetry

Sonnet XI

Alan Seeger, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

La Nue

Oft when sweet music undulated round,
Like the full moon out of a perfumed sea
Thine image from the waves of blissful sound
Rose and thy sudden light illumined me.

And in the country, leaf and flower and air
Would alter and the eternal shape emerge;
Because they spoke of thee the fields seemed fair,
And Joy to wait at the horizon's verge.

The little cloud-gaps in the east that filled
Gray afternoons with bits of tenderest blue
Were windows in a palace pearly-silled
That thy voluptuous traits came glimmering through.

And in the city, dominant desire
For which men toil within its prison-bars,
I watched thy white feet moving in the mire
And thy white forehead hid among the stars.

Mystical, feminine, provoking, nude,
Radiant there with...

Alan Seeger

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 phosphorescent 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 bo...

Alan Seeger

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

Midsummer

After the May time, and after the June time,
    Rare with blossoms and perfumes sweet,
Cometh the round world's royal noon time,
    The red midsummer of blazing heat.
When the sun, like an eye that never closes,
    Bends on the earth its fervid gaze,
And the winds are still, and the crimson roses
    Droop and wither and die in its rays.

Unto my heart has come that season,
    O my lady, my worshipped one,
When over the stars of Pride and Reason
    Sails Love's cloudless, noonday sun.
Like a great red ball in my bosom burning
    With fires that nothing can quench or tame.
It glows till my heart itself seems turning
    Into a liquid lake of flame.

The hopes half shy, and the sighs all tender,
    The dreams and fears of an earlier day,

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Summer Songs

I

How thick the grass,
    How green the shade -
All for love
    And lovers made.

Wood-lilies white
    As hidden lace -
Open your bodice,
    That's their place.

See how the sun-god
    Overpowers
The summer lying
    Deep in flowers;

With burning kisses
    Of bright gold
Fills her young womb
    With joy untold;

And all the world
    Is lad and lass,
A blue sky
    And a couch of grass.

Summer is here -
    let us drain
It all! it may
    Not come again.


II

How the leaves thicken
    On the boughs,
And the birds make
Their lyric vows.

O the beating, breaking
    Heart of things,
The pulse and passion -
    How it ...

Richard Le Gallienne

Midsummer.

After the May time, and after the June time
    Rare with blossoms and perfumes sweet,
Cometh the round world's royal noon time,
    The red midsummer of blazing heat.
When the sun, like an eye that never closes,
    Bends on the earth its fervid gaze,
And the winds are still, and the crimson roses
    Droop and wither and die in its rays.

Unto my heart has come that season,
    O my lady, my worshiped one,
When over the stars of Pride and Reason
    Sails Love's cloudless, noonday sun.
Like a great red ball in my bosom burning
    With fires that nothing can quench or tame.
It glows till my heart itself seems turning
    Into a liquid lake of flame.

The hopes half shy, and the sighs all tender,
    The dreams and fears of an earlier day,

Ella Wheeler Wilcox