American

Alan Seeger

1888–1916


Alan Seeger (1888–1916) was an American poet born in New York City and educated at Harvard. After graduating in 1910 he lived for some years in the Latin Quarter of Paris, and his early verse, much of it in the manner of the late Romantics and the Pre-Raphaelites, celebrates beauty, travel and love.

When war broke out in 1914 he enlisted in the French Foreign Legion, serving on the Aisne and in Champagne. He was killed at Belloy-en-Santerre on 4 July 1916. His Poems, with an introduction by William Archer, appeared in 1916 and made him widely known, above all for “I Have a Rendezvous with Death.”

  1. An Ode to Natural Beauty
  2. The Deserted Garden
  3. The Torture of Cuauhtemoc
  4. The Nympholept
  5. The Wanderer
  6. The Need to Love
  7. El Extraviado
  8. La Nue
  9. All That's Not Love . . .
  10. Paris
  11. The Sultan's Palace
  12. Fragment: In that fair capital where Pleasure, crowned
  13. Fragment: There was a time when I thought much of Fame,
  14. Fragment: For there were nights . . . my love to him whose brow
  15. Fragment: What is Success? Out of the endless ore
  16. Sonnet I
  17. Sonnet II
  18. Sonnet III
  19. Sonnet IV
  20. Sonnet V
  21. Sonnet VI
  22. Sonnet VII
  23. Sonnet VIII
  24. Sonnet IX
  25. Sonnet X
  26. Sonnet XI
  27. Sonnet XII
  28. Sonnet XIII
  29. Sonnet XIV
  30. Sonnet XV
  31. Sonnet XVI
  32. Kyrenaikos
  33. Antinous
  34. Vivien
  35. I Loved . . .
  36. Virginibus Puerisque . . .
  37. With a Copy of Shakespeare's Sonnets on Leaving College
  38. Written in a Volume of the Comtesse de Noailles
  39. Coucy
  40. Tezcotzinco
  41. The Old Lowe House, Staten Island
  42. Oneata
  43. On the Cliffs, Newport
  44. To England at the Outbreak of the Balkan War
  45. At the Tomb of Napoleon Before the Elections in America--November, 1912
  46. The Rendezvous
  47. Do You Remember Once . . .
  48. The Bayadere
  49. Eudaemon
  50. Broceliande
  51. Lyonesse
  52. Tithonus
  53. An Ode to Antares
  54. The Aisne (1914-15)
  55. Champagne (1914-15)
  56. The Hosts
  57. Maktoob
  58. I Have a Rendezvous with Death . . .
  59. Sonnet I (Last Poems)
  60. Sonnet II (Last Poems)
  61. Sonnet III (Last Poems)
  62. Sonnet IV (Last Poems)
  63. Sonnet V (Last Poems)
  64. Sonnet VI (Last Poems)
  65. Sonnet VII (Last Poems)
  66. Sonnet VIII (Last Poems)
  67. Sonnet IX (Last Poems)
  68. Sonnet X (Last Poems)
  69. Sonnet XI (Last Poems)
  70. Sonnet XII (Last Poems)
  71. Bellinglise
  72. Liebestod
  73. Resurgam
  74. A Message to America
  75. Introduction and Conclusion of a Long Poem
  76. Ode in Memory of the American Volunteers Fallen for France

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