Page:Poems, Alan Seeger, 1916.djvu/75

 I sometimes think a conscious happiness

Mantles through all the rose's sentient vine

When summer winds with myriad calyces

Of bloom its clambering height incarnadine;

I sometimes think that cleaving lips, no less,

And limbs that crowned desires at length entwine

Are nerves through which that being drinks delight,

Whose frame is the green Earth robed round with day and night.

And such were theirs: the traveller without,

Pausing at night under the orchard trees,

Wondered and crossed himself in holy doubt,

For through their song and in the murmuring breeze

It seemed angelic choirs were all about

Mingling in universal harmonies,

As though, responsive to the chords they woke,

All Nature into sweet epithalamium broke.

And still they think a spirit haunts the place:

'Tis said, when Night has drawn her jewelled pall

And through the branches twinkling fireflies trace

Their mimic constellations, if it fall

That one should see the moon rise through the lace

Of blossomy boughs above the garden wall,

That surely would he take great ill thereof

And famish in a fit of unexpressive love.

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