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Alan Seeger - Introduction
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I have gone sometimes by the gates of Death 
And stood beside the cavern through whose doors 
Enter the voyagers into the unseen. 
From that dread threshold only, gazing back, 
Have eyes in swift illumination seen 
Life utterly revealed, and guessed therein 
What things were vital and what things were vain. 
Know then, like a vast ocean from my feet 
Spreading away into the morning sky, 
I saw unrolled my vanished days, and, lo, 
Oblivion like a morning mist obscured 
Toils, trials, ambitions, agitations, ease, 
And like green isles, sun-kissed, with sweet perfume 
Loading the airs blown back from that dim gulf, 
Gleamed only through the all-involving haze 
The hours when we have loved and been beloved. 


Therefore, sweet friends, as often as by Love 
You rise absorbed into the harmony 
Of planets singing round magnetic suns, 
Let not propriety nor prejudice 
Nor the precepts of jealous age deny 
What Sense so incontestably affirms; 
Cling to the blessed moment and drink deep 
Of the sweet cup it tends, as there alone 
Were that which makes life worth the pain to live. 
What is so fair as lovers in their joy 
That dies in sleep, their sleep that wakes in joy? 
Caressing arms are their light pillows. They 
That like lost stars have wandered hitherto 
Lonesome and lightless through the universe, 
Now glow transfired at Nature`s flaming core; 
They are the centre; constellated heaven 
Is the embroidered panoply spread round 
Their bridal, and the music of the spheres 
Rocks them in hushed epithalamium. 


. . . . . 


I know that there are those whose idle tongues 
Blaspheme the beauty of the world that was 
So wondrous and so worshipful to me. 
I call them those that, in the palace where 
Down perfumed halls the Sleeping Beauty lay, 
Wandered without the secret or the key. 
I know that there are those, of gentler heart, 
Broken by grief or by deception bowed, 
Who in some realm beyond the grave conceive 
The bliss they found not here; but, as for me, 
In the soft fibres of the tender flesh 
I saw potentialities of Joy 
Ten thousand lifetimes could not use. Dear Earth, 
In this dark month when deep as morning dew 
On thy maternal breast shall fall the blood 
Of those that were thy loveliest and thy best, 
If it be fate that mine shall mix with theirs, 
Hear this my natural prayer, for, purified 
By that Lethean agony and clad 
In more resplendent powers, I ask nought else 
Than reincarnate to retrace my path, 
Be born again of woman, walk once more 
Through Childhood`s fragrant, flowery wonderland 
And, entered in the golden realm of Youth, 
Fare still a pilgrim toward the copious joys 
I savored here yet scarce began to sip; 
Yea, with the comrades that I loved so well 
Resume the banquet we had scarce begun 
When in the street we heard the clarion-call 
And each man sprang to arms — ay, even myself 
Who loved sweet Youth too truly not to share 
Its pain no less than its delight. If prayers 
Are to be prayed, lo, here is mine! Be this 
My resurrection, this my recompense!
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