Page:Poems, Alan Seeger, 1916.djvu/163

 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

Unworshipped of my love. I cannot see

In Life's profusion and passionate 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 113