Sonnet VIII

Alan Seeger

Oft as by chance, a little while apart

The pall of empty, loveless hours withdrawn,

Sweet Beauty, opening on the impoverished heart,

Beams like the jewel on the breast of dawn:

Not though high heaven should rend would deeper awe

Fill me than penetrates my spirit thus,

Nor all those signs the Patmian prophet saw

Seem a new heaven and earth so marvelous;

But, clad thenceforth in iridescent dyes,

The fair world glistens, and in after days

The memory of kind lips and laughing eyes

Lives in my step and lightens all my face, —

So they who found the Earthly Paradise

Still breathed, returned, of that sweet, joyful place.