# Poems (Seeger)/Juvenilia/An Ode to Antares

AN ODE TO ANTARES
At dusk, when lowlands where dark waters glide Robe in gray mist, and through the greening hills The hoot-owl calls his mate, and whippoorwills Clamor from every copse and orchard-side, I watched the red star rising in the East, And while his fellows of the flaming sign From prisoning daylight more and more released, Lift their pale lamps, and, climbing higher, higher, Out of their locks the waters of the Line Shaking in clouds of phosphorescent fire, Rose in the splendor of their curving flight, Their dolphin leap across the austral night, From windows southward opening on the sea What eyes, I wondered, might be watching, too, Orbed in some blossom-laden balcony. Where, from the garden to the rail above, As though a lover's greeting to his love Should borrow body and form and hue And tower in torrents of floral flame, The crimson bougainvillea grew, What starlit brow uplifted to the same Majestic regress of the summering sky, What ultimate thing–hushed, holy, throned as high Above the currents that tarnish and profane As silver summits are whose pure repose No curious eyes disclose Nor any footfalls stain, ​But round their beauty on azure evenings Only the oreads go on gauzy wings, Only the oreads troop with dance and song And airy beings in rainbow mists who throng Out of those wonderful worlds that lie afar Betwixt the outmost cloud and the nearest star.
Like the moon, sanguine in the orient night Shines the red flower in her beautiful hair. Her breasts are distant islands of delight Upon a sea where all is soft and fair. Those robes that make a silken sheath For each lithe attitude that flows beneath, Shrouding in scented folds sweet warmths and tumid flowers, Call them far clouds that half emerge Beyond a sunset ocean's utmost verge, Hiding in purple shade and downpour of soft showers Enchanted isles by mortal foot untrod, And there in humid dells resplendent orchids nod; There always from serene horizons blow Soul-easing gales and there all spice-trees grow That Phœnix robbed to line his fragrant nest Each hundred years in Araby the Blest.
Star of the South that now through orient mist At nightfall off Tampico or Belize Greetest the sailor rising from those seas Where first in me, a fond romanticist, ​The tropic sunset's bloom on cloudy piles Cast out industrious cares with dreams of fabulous isles— Thou lamp of the swart lover to his tryst, O'er planted acres at the jungle's rim Reeking with orange-flower and tuberose, Dear to his eyes thy ruddy splendor glows Among the palms where beauty waits for him; Bliss too thou bringst to our greening North, Red scintillant through cherry-blossom rifts, Herald of summer-heat, and all the gifts And all the joys a summer can bring forth—
Be thou my star, for I have made my aim To follow loveliness till autumn-strown Sunder the sinews of this flower-like frame As rose-leaves sunder when the bud is blown. Ay, sooner spirit and sense disintegrate Than reconcilement to a common fate Strip the enchantment from a world so dressed In hues of high romance. I cannot rest While aught of beauty in any path untrod Swells into bloom and spreads sweet charms abroad Unworshipped of my love. I cannot see In Life's profusion and passionate brevity How hearts enamored of life can strain too much In one long tension to hear, to see, to touch. Now on each rustling night-wind from the South Far music calls; beyond the harbor mouth Each outbound argosy with sail unfurled ​May point the path through this fortuitous world That holds the heart from its desire. Away! Where tinted coast-towns gleam at close of day, Where squares are sweet with bells, or shores thick set With bloom and bower, with mosque and minaret. Blue peaks loom up beyond the coast-plains here, White roads wind up the dales and disappear, By silvery waters in the plains afar Glimmers the inland city like a star, With gilded gates and sunny spires ablaze And burnished domes half-seen through luminous haze, Lo, with what opportunity Earth teems! How like a fair its ample beauty seems! Fluttering with flags its proud pavilions rise: What bright bazars, what marvelous merchandise, Down seething alleys what melodious din, What clamor importuning from every booth! At Earth's great market where Joy is trafficked in Buy while thy purse yet swells with golden Youth!