Eudaemon

Alan Seeger

O happiness, I know not what far seas,

Blue hills and deep, thy sunny realms surround,

That thus in Music’s wistful harmonies

And concert of sweet sound

A rumor steals, from some uncertain shore,

Of lovely things outworn or gladness yet in store:

Whether thy beams be pitiful and come,

Across the sundering of vanished years,

From childhood and the happy fields of home,

Like eyes instinct with tears

Felt through green brakes of hedge and apple-bough

Round haunts delightful once, desert and silent now;

Or yet if prescience of unrealized love

Startle the breast with each melodious air,

And gifts that gentle hands are donors of

Still wait intact somewhere,

Furled up all golden in a perfumed place

Within the folded petals of forthcoming days.

Only forever, in the old unrest

Of winds and waters and the varying year,

A litany from islands of the blessed

Answers, Not here . . . not here!

And over the wide world that wandering cry

Shall lead my searching heart unsoothed until I die.