Page:Poems, Alan Seeger, 1916.djvu/72

 Sometimes the peasant, coming late from town

With empty panniers on his little drove

Past the old lookout when the Northern Crown

Glittered with Cygnus through the scented grove,

Would hear soft noise of lute-strings wafted down

And voices singing through the leaves above

Those songs that well from the warm heart that woos

At balconies in Merida or Vera Cruz.

And he would pause under the garden wall,

Caught in the spell of that voluptuous strain,

With all the sultry South in it, and all

Its importunity of love and pain;

And he would wait till the last passionate fall

Died on the night, and all was still again,—

Then to his upland village wander home,

Marvelling whence that flood of elfin song might come.

O lyre that Love's white holy hands caress,

Youth, from thy bosom welled their passionate lays—

Sweet opportunity for happiness

So brief, so passing beautiful—O days,

When to the heart's divine indulgences

All earth in smiling ministration pays—

Thine was the source whose plenitude, past over,

What prize shall rest to pluck, what secret to discover!

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