Sonnet III

Alan Seeger

There was a youth around whose early way

White angels hung in converse and sweet choir,

Teaching in summer clouds his thought to stray, —

In cloud and far horizon to desire.

His life was nursed in beauty, like the stream

Born of clear showers and the mountain dew,

Close under snow-clad summits where they gleam

Forever pure against heaven’s orient blue.

Within the city’s shades he walked at last.

Faint and more faint in sad recessional

Down the dim corridors of Time outworn,

A chorus ebbed from that forsaken past,

A hymn of glories fled beyond recall

With the lost heights and splendor of life’s morn.