Page:Poems, Alan Seeger, 1916.djvu/54

 One then with all beneath the radiant skies

That laughs with him or sighs,

It courses through the lilac-scented air,

A blessing on the fields, a wonder everywhere.

Spirit of Beauty, whose sweet impulses,

Flung like the rose of dawn across the sea,

Alone can flush the exalted consciousness

With shafts of sensible divinity—

Light of the World, essential loveliness:

Him whom the Muse hath made thy votary

Not from her paths and gentle precepture

Shall vulgar ends engage, nor break the spell

That taught him first to feel thy secret charms

And o'er the earth, obedient to their lure,

Their sweet surprise and endless miracle,

To follow ever with insatiate arms.

On summer afternoons,

When from the blue horizon to the shore,

Casting faint silver pathways like the moon's

Across the Ocean's glassy, mottled floor,

Far clouds uprear their gleaming battlements

Drawn to the crest of some bleak eminence,

When autumn twilight fades on the sere hill

And autumn winds are still;

To watch the East for some emerging sign,

Wintry Capella or the Pleiades

Or that great huntsman with the golden gear;

Ravished in hours like these 4