SEEGER,A lan

I Have a Rendezvous with Death

I have a rendezvous with Death

At some disputed barricade,

When Spring comes back with rustling shade

And apple-blossoms fill the air—

I have a rendezvous with Death

When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand

And lead me into his dark land

And close my eyes and quench my breath—

It may be I shall pass him still.

I have a rendezvous with Death

On some scarred slope of battered hill,

When Spring comes round again this year

And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows 'twere better to be deep

Pillowed in silk and scented down,

Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep,

Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,

Where hushed awakenings are dear ...

But I've a rendezvous with Death

At midnight in some flaming town,

When Spring trips north again this year,

And I to my pledged word am true,

I shall not fail that rendezvous.

Sonnet 16 - Who shall invoke her, who shall be her priest

Who shall invoke her, who shall be her priest,

With single rites the common debt to pay?

On some green headland fronting to the East

Our fairest boy shall kneel at break of day.

Naked, uplifting in a laden tray

New milk and honey and sweet-tinctured wine,

Not without twigs of clustering apple-spray

To wreath a garland for Our Lady's shrine.

The morning planet poised above the sea

Shall drop sweet influence through her drowsing lid;

Dew-drenched, his delicate virginity

Shall scarce disturb the flowers he kneels amid,

That, waked so lightly, shall lift up their eyes,

Cushion his knees, and nod between his thighs.

An Ode to Natural Beauty

There 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, 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.

…..