Sonnet XIV:

Alan Seeger

IT may be for the world of weeds and tares

And dearth in Nature of sweet Beauty’s rose

That oft as Fortune from ten thousand shows

One from the train of Love’s true courtiers

Straightway on him who gazes, unawares,

Deep wonder seizes and swift trembling grows,

Reft by that sight of purpose and repose,

Hardly its weight his fainting breast upbears.

Then on the soul from some ancestral place

Floods back remembrance of its heavenly birth,

When, in the light of that serener sphere,

It saw ideal beauty face to face

That through the forms of this our meaner Earth

Shines with a beam less steadfast and less clear.