Page:Poems, Alan Seeger, 1916.djvu/53

 AN ODE TO NATURAL BEAUTY

is a power whose inspiration fills

Nature's fair fabric, sun- and star-inwrought,

Like airy dew ere any drop distils,

Like perfume in the laden flower, like aught

Unseen which interfused throughout the whole

Becomes its quickening pulse and principle and soul.

Now when, the drift of old desire renewing,

Warm tides flow northward over valley and field,

When half-forgotten sound and scent are wooing

From their deep-chambered recesses long sealed

Such memories as breathe once more

Of childhood and the happy hues it wore,

Now, with a fervor that has never been

In years gone by, it stirs me to respond,—

Not as a force whose fountains are within

The faculties of the percipient mind,

Subject with them to darkness and decay,

But something absolute, something beyond,

Oft met like tender orbs that seem to peer

From pale horizons, luminous behind

Some fringe of tinted cloud at close of day;

And in this flood of the reviving year,

When to the loiterer by sylvan streams,

Deep in those cares that make Youth loveliest,

Nature in every common aspect seems

To comment on the burden in his breast—

The joys he covets and the dreams he dreams— 3