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Sonnet XIV

By Alan Seeger

Topics: classic

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.

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Author:Alan Seeger

"It may be for the world of weeds and tares..." by Alan Seeger

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"The Text is taken from Percy's Reliques (1765), vol. i. p. 71, 'given from two MS. copies, transmitted from Scotland.' Herd had a very similar bal"

Alan Seeger

About Alan Seeger

Alan Seeger (1888–1916) was an American poet who fought in the French Foreign Legion during World War I. His poem "I Have a Rendezvous with Death" is one of the most famous war poems, and he was killed in action at the Battle of the Somme.

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