It was in the spirit of a romanticist of the eighteen-forties that
he plunged into the life of Paris. He had a room near the Musee de Cluny,
and he found himself thoroughly at home among the artists and students
of the Latin Quarter, though he occasionally varied the `Vie de Boheme'
by excursions into "society" of a more orthodox type.
Paris has had many lovers, but few more devoted than Alan Seeger.
He accepted the life of "die singende, springende, schoene Paris"
with a curious whole-heartedness. Here and there we find evidence
-- for instance, in the first two sonnets -- that he was not blind
to its seamy side. But on the whole he appears to have seen beauty
even in aspects of it for which it is almost as difficult
to find aesthetic as moral justification. The truth is, no doubt,
that the whole spectacle was plunged for him in the glamour of romance.
Paris did not belong to the working-day world, but was like
Baghdad or Samarcand, a city of the Arabian Nights.
How his imagination transfigured it we may see in such a passage as this:

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 bazaars, what marvellous merchandise,
Down seething alleys what melodious din,
What clamor, importuning from every booth:
At Earth's great mart where Joy is trafficked in
Buy while thy purse yet swells with golden Youth!