The Poetry Corner

Kyrenaikos

By Alan Seeger

Lay me where soft Cyrene rambles down In grove and garden to the sapphire sea; Twine yellow roses for the drinker's crown; Let music reach and fair heads circle me, Watching blue ocean where the white sails steer Fruit-laden forth or with the wares and news Of merchant cities seek our harbors here, Careless how Corinth fares, how Syracuse; But here, with love and sleep in her caress, Warm night shall sink and utterly persuade The gentle doctrine Aristippus bare, - Night-winds, and one whose white youth's loveliness, In a flowered balcony beside me laid, Dreams, with the starlight on her fragrant hair.