Page:Poems, Alan Seeger, 1916.djvu/217



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; 167