Poem by Alan Seeger

* * *

All that's not love is the dearth of my days,
 The leaves of the volume with rubric unwrit,
The temple in times without prayer, without praise,
 The altar unset and the candle unlit.

Let me survive not the lovable sway
 Of early desire, nor see when it goes
The courts of Life's abbey in ivied decay,
 Whence sometime sweet anthems and incense arose.

The delicate hues of its sevenfold rings
 The rainbow outlives not; their yellow and blue
The butterfly sees not dissolve from his wings,
 But even with their beauty life fades from them too.

No more would I linger past Love's ardent bounds
 Nor live for aught else but the joy that it craves,
That, burden and essence of all that surrounds,
 Is the song in the wind and the smile on the waves.

1. Thirty Sonnets. 5. Sonnet 5. A tide of beauty with returning May
2. Thirty Sonnets. 13. Sonnet 13. I fancied, while you stood conversing there
3. Tithonus
4. Thirty Sonnets. 15. Sonnet 15. Above the ruin of God's holy place
5. Thirty Sonnets. 6. Sonnet 6. Give me the treble of thy horns and hoofs

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