All That's Not Love . . .

Alan Seeger 1888 (New York City) – 1916



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.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

42 sec read
134

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABAB CDCD EXEB FGFG
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 745
Words 138
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4

Alan Seeger

Alan Seeger was an American poet who fought and died in World War I during the Battle of the Somme serving in the French Foreign Legion. more…

All Alan Seeger poems | Alan Seeger Books

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