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Alan Seeger

The Aisne (1914-15)

We first saw fire on the tragic slopes
    Where the flood-tide of France's early gain,
Big with wrecked promise and abandoned hopes,
    Broke in a surf of blood along the Aisne.

The charge her heroes left us, we assumed,
    What, dying, they reconquered, we preserved,
In the chill trenches, harried, shelled, entombed,
    Winter came down on us, but no man swerved.

Winter came down on us. The low clouds, torn
    In the stark branches of the riven pines,
Blurred the white rockets that from dusk till morn
    Traced the wide curve of the close-grappling lines.

In rain, and fog that on the withered hill
    Froze before dawn, the lurking foe drew down;
Or light snows fell that made forlorner still
    ⁠The ravaged country and the ruined town;

Or the long clouds would end. Intensely fair,
    The winter constellations blazing forth—
Perseus, the Twins, Orion, the Great Bear—
    Gleamed on our bayonets pointing to the north.

And the lone sentinel would start and soar
    On wings of strong emotion as he knew
That kinship with the stars that only War
    Is great enough to lift man's spirit to.

And ever down the curving front, aglow
    With the pale rockets' intermittent light,
He heard, like distant thunder, growl and grow
    The rumble of far battles in the night,—

Rumors, reverberant, indistinct, remote,
    Borne from red fields whose martial names have won
The power to thrill like a far trumpet-note,—
    Vic, Vailly, Soupir, Hurtebise, Craonne...

Craonne, before thy cannon-swept plateau,
    Where like sere leaves lay strewn September's dead,
    I found for all dear things I forfeited
A recompense I would not now forego.

For that high fellowship was ours then
    With those who, championing another's good,
    More than dull Peace or its poor votaries could,
Taught us the dignity of being men.

There we drained deeper the deep cup of life,
    And on sublimer summits came to learn,
    ⁠After soft things, the terrible and stern,
After sweet Love, the majesty of Strife;

There where we faced under those frowning heights
    The blast that maims, the hurricane that kills;
    ⁠There where the watchlights on the winter hills
Flickered like balefire through inclement nights;

There where, firm links in the unyielding chain,
Where fell the long-planned blow and fell in vain—
    Hearts worthy of the honor and the trial,
We helped to hold the lines along the Aisne.

About the poet

Alan SeegerAlan Seeger
1888-1916

 
By the same poet
Juvenilia
An Ode to Natural Beauty
The Deserted Garden
The Torture of Cuauhtemoc
The Nympholept
The Wanderer
The Need to Love
El Extraviado
La Nue
All That's Not Love...
Paris
The Sultan’s Palace
Fragments
Thirty Sonnets
Sonnet I
Sonnet II
Sonnet III
Sonnet IV
Sonnet V
Sonnet VI
Sonnet VII
Sonnet VIII
Sonnet IX
Sonnet X
Sonnet XI
Sonnet XII
Sonnet XIII
Sonnet XIV
Sonnet XV
Sonnet XVI
Kyrenaikos
Antinous
Vivien
I Loved...
Virginibus Puerisque...
With a Copy of Shakespeare’s Sonnets on Leaving College
Written in a Volume of the Comtesse de Noailles
Coucy
Tezcotzinco
The Old Lowe House, Staten Island
Oneata
On the Cliffs, Newport
To England at the Outbreak of the Balkan War
At the Tomb of Napoleon Before the Elections in America—November, 1912
The Rendezvous
Do You Remember Once...
The Bayadere
Eudæmon
Broceliande
Lyonesse
Tithonus
An Ode to Antares
Translations
Dante. Inferno, Canto XXVI
Ariosto. Orlando Furioso, Canto X, 91-99
On a Theme in the Greek Anthology
After an Epigram of Clement Marot
Last Poems
Champagne (1914-15)
The Hosts
Maktoob
I Have a Rendezvous with Death...
Sonnets
Sonnet I
Sonnet II
Sonnet III
Sonnet IV
Sonnet V
Sonnet VI
Sonnet VII
Sonnet VIII
Sonnet IX
Sonnet X
Sonnet XI
Sonnet XII
Bellinglise
Liebestod
Resurgam
A Message to America
Introduction and Conclusion of a Long Poem
Ode in Memory of the American Volunteers Fallen for France
 
Related books
Alan Seeger at amazon.co.uk

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