Page:Poems, Alan Seeger, 1916.djvu/57

 An all-sufficient law, abode with me,

Importing something more than unsubstantial dreams

To vigils by lone shores and walks by murmuring streams.

Youth's flowers like childhood's fade and are forgot.

Fame twines a tardy crown of yellowing leaves.

How swift were disillusion, were it not

That thou art steadfast where all else deceives!

Solace and Inspiration, Power divine

That by some mystic sympathy of thine,

When least it waits and most hath need of thee,

Can startle the dull spirit suddenly

With grandeur welled from unsuspected springs,—

Long as the light of fulgent evenings,

When from warm showers the pearly shades disband

And sunset opens o'er the humid land,

Shows thy veiled immanence in orient skies,—

Long as pale mist and opalescent dyes

Hung on far isle or vanishing mountain-crest,

Fields of remote enchantment can suggest

So sweet to wander in it matters nought,

They hold no place but in impassioned thought,

Long as one draught from a clear sky may be

A scented luxury;

Be thou my worship, thou my sole desire,

Thy paths my pilgrimage, my sense a lyre

Æolian for thine every breath to stir;

Oft when her full-blown periods recur,

To see the birth of day's transparent moon 7