Chapter 3

The wide range of this young American's writing astonishes the reader. He died very young: while the morning sun was just lifting its head above the eastern horizon of life; while the heavens were still crimson, and gold, and rose, and fire. What he might have written in the steady white heat of noontime and in life's glorious afternoon of experience, and in its subtle charm of "sunset and the evening star," one can only guess. But while he lived he lived; and, living, wrote. He dipped his pen in that same gold and fire of the only part of life he knew, its daybreak, and wrote. No wonder his writing was warm; no wonder he wrote of Youth, Beauty, Fame, Joy, Love, Death, and God.

THE SONG OF YOUTH

Nor Byron, nor Shelley, nor Keats, nor Swinburne, nor Brooke, nor any other poet ever sounded the heights and depths and glory of Youth as did Seeger. He sang it as he breathed it and lived it, and just as naturally. His singing of it was as rhythmic as breathing, and as sweet as the first song of an oriole in springtime. In his fifth sonnet, a form in which he loved to write and of which he was a master, he sings youth in terms "almost divine":

"Phantoms of bliss that beckon and recede--, Thy strange allurements, City that I love, Maze of romance, where I have followed too The dream Youth treasures of its dearest need And stars beyond thy towers bring tidings of."

Poems by Alan Seeger.

He loved New York; he loved Paris; he loved any city because youth and life and romance and love were there. He drank all of these into his soul like a thirsty desert drinks rain; to spring to flowers and life and color again. He drank of life and youth as a flower drinks of dew, or a bird at a city fountain, with fluttering joy, drinks, singing as it drinks. You feel all of that eagerness in "Sonnet VI" where he says:

"Where I drank deep the bliss of being young, The strife and sweet potential flux of things I sought Youth's dream of happiness among!"

Poems by Alan Seeger.

THE SONG OF BEAUTY

And closely akin to Youth always is Beauty. Beauty and Youth walk arm in arm everywhere, and one may even go so far as to say anywhere. Youth cares not where he goes as long as Beauty walks beside him. He will walk to the ends of the earth. Indeed, he prefers the long way home. Anybody who has known both Youth and Beauty knows this, and it need not be argued about much, thank God. And so it is most natural to find this young poet singing the lyric of Beauty even as he sings the lyric of Youth. How understandingly he addresses Beauty, and how reverently in "An Ode to Natural Beauty"!

"Spirit of Beauty, whose sweet impulses, Flung like the rose of dawn across the sea, Alone can flush the exalted consciousness With shafts of sensible divinity, Light of the World, essential loveliness."

Poems by Alan Seeger.

Then, talking about the "Wanderer" as though that character were some far off person no kin to the poet (a way that poets have to hide the pulsing of their own hearts), Seeger writes of Beauty. But we who know him cannot be made to think that this "Wanderer" is a fellow we do not know; "nor Launcelot, nor another." It is he, the poet of whom we write. It bears his imprint. It bears his trade mark. It is stamped "with the image of the king." He cannot hide from us in this:

"His heart the love of Beauty held as hides One gem most pure a casket of pure gold. It was too rich a lesser thing to hold; It was not large enough for aught besides."

Poems by Alan Seeger.

THE SONG OF FAME

Fame always lures Youth. Perhaps later experience proves that it is indeed a hollow thing, hardly worth striving for. But to Youth there is no goal that calls more insistently than Fame. Youth and Beauty and Fame--how closely akin they are! If Beauty and Fame keep him company, Youth is next the stars with delight. And so it is natural that this young poet shall sing the song of Fame with exuberant enthusiasm. He says in "The Need to Love":

"And I have followed Fame with less devotion, And kept no real ambition but to see Rise from the foam of Nature's sunlit ocean My dream of palpable divinity."

Poems by Alan Seeger.

And while we are listening to the music of these human stars, the music of the celestial spheres set down in human words, let us catch again the poetic echo of that third line and let it linger long as we listen, "Rise from the foam of Nature's sunlit ocean," and

"Forget it not till the crowns are crumbled, Till the swords of the kings are rent with rust; Forget it not till the hills lie humbled, And the Springs of the seas run dust,"

that, as Edwin Markham sings, this echo is the echo of the eternal poetic music.

With these wondrous lines he answers the question which he himself asks in "Fragments," "What is Success?"

"Out of the endless ore Of deep desire to coin the utmost gold Of passionate memory: to have lived so well That the fifth moon, when it swims up once more Through orchard boughs where mating orioles build And apple trees unfold, Find not of that dear need that all things tell The heart unburdened nor the arms unfilled."

Poems by Alan Seeger.

Joy comes next in our treatment of the outstanding singings of this singing poet, and he himself has given us the connecting link in the following lines:

"He has drained as well Joy's perfumed bowl and cried as I have cried: Be Fame their mistress whom Love passes by."

Poems by Alan Seeger.

And thus smoothly we pass from Fame to Joy and hear him sing of this fourth high peak of Youth.

THE SONG OF JOY

Whatever he did, whatever he sang, whatever he lived, this man swept all things else aside and plunged in over head. He loved to swim and he loved to dive. Perhaps into his living and his writing he carried this athletic joy also, and as he lived he lived to the full. It seems so as one reads in "I Loved" these impassioned lines:

"From a boy I gloated on existence. Earth to me Seemed all sufficient and my sojourn there One trembling opportunity for joy."

Poems by Alan Seeger.

And then one pauses to weep awhile, and the lines grow dim as he reads them again to know that this man, who so loved to live, who gloated on existence, who saw life as a trembling opportunity for Joy, must leave it so soon. And yet he left it nobly. Again in "An Ode to Antares" he sings of Joy:

"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!"

Poems by Alan Seeger.

Kindly Age, Age who had not lost his love, always sings like that to Youth; always tells Youth to live while he may, play while the playworld is his. Every poet who has older grown, from Shakespeare to Lowell, and yet retained his love, has told us this. We expect it of older poets, but here a young poet sees it all clearly; that Youth must buy Joy while his purse is full with Youth. And ye who rob Youth of playtime, of Joy, ye capitalists, ye money makers and life destroyers, listen to this dead poet who yet lives in these words. Fathers, mothers, let childhood spend its all for Joy while the purse of Youth is full. It will be empty after while and it shall never be filled again with Youth. So says the Poet.

THE SONG OF LOVE

The discriminating reader of Seeger soon sees, however, that, while he sings as needs he must, because of the springs that are within him bubbling over, sings of Youth, and Beauty, and Fame, and Joy, yet he knows that these are not all of life. He knows that there are higher things than these. These higher things are Love, Death, God--what a trilogy!

Love is all. He is sure of this. He is true to this. Romantic love he knows--love of comrade, love of God. In this same "An Ode to Natural Beauty" his final conclusion is that Love is best after all:

"On any venture set, but 'twas the first For Beauty willed them, yea whatever be The faults I wanted wings to rise above; I am cheered yet to think how steadfastly I have been loyal to the love of Love!"

Poems by Alan Seeger.

This is more than romantic love; it is the "love of Love."

And lest this be not strong enough, he sings in "The Need to Love" as great a song as man ever heard on this great theme:

"The need to love that all the stars obey Entered my heart and banished all beside. Bare were the gardens where I used to stray; Faded the flowers that one time satisfied."

Poems by Alan Seeger.

Then, not content, he sets up an altar of poetry and dedicates it to Love and lights a fire of worship there, and leaves it not, nor night nor day:

"All that's not love is the dearth of my days, The leaves of the volume with rubric unwrit, The temple in times without prayer, without praise, The altar unset and the candle unlit."

Poems by Alan Seeger.

If Love be not queen to him, the palace is cold and barren; the "altar unset and the candle unlit"

THE SONG OF DEATH

Like Brooke, a victim of the Hun, so Seeger, also a victim of the barbarian, seemed to feel the constant presence of Death, an unseen guest at the Feast of Youth and Joy and Fame and Love. Perhaps the war made these two imaginative poets think of Death sooner than Youth usually gives him heed. But most men will think of Death when they are face to face with the shadow day and night as were these soldier-crusading poets; when they see him stalking in every trench, in every wood, on every hill and road, and in every field and village. But how bravely he spoke of Death!--

"Learn to drive fear, then, from your heart. If you must perish, know, O man, 'Tis an inevitable part Of the predestined plan."

Poems by Alan Seeger.

And again in this same poem, "Makatooh," he sings of Death:

"Guard that, not bowed nor blanched with fear You enter, but serene, erect, As you would wish most to appear To those you most respect.

"So die, as though your funeral Ushered you through the doors that led Into a stately banquet hall Where heroes banqueted;

"And it shall all depend therein Whether you come as slave or lord, If they acclaim you as their kin Or spurn you from their board."

Poems by Alan Seeger.

What a challenge this is to all who must die in this war, to all lads who are giving their lives heroically in God's great cause of liberty in his world--this challenge to die so that you may be welcomed into the fraternity of heroes!

Without doubt Seeger's best-known poem, and one which illustrates also most strongly his attitude toward Death, is that poem entitled "I Have a Rendezvous With Death," from which we quote:

"I have a rendezvous with Death At some disputed barricade; When Spring comes back with rustling shade And apple blossoms fill the air-- I have a rendezvous with Death When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

* * * * *

"God knows, 'twere better to be deep Pillowed in silk and scented down, Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep, Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath, Where hushed awakenings are dear,... But I've a rendezvous with Death At midnight in some flaming town; When Spring trips north again this year, And I to my pledged word am true, I shall not fail that rendezvous."

Poems by Alan Seeger.

THE SONG OF GOD

From the lighter thoughts of Youth, Joy, Fame, Beauty, through the "long, long thoughts of Youth"; through Love and Death it is not a long way to climb to God. We would not expect this young poet to be thinking much in this direction, but he does just the same. I have even found those who say that he was not a God-man, but these poems refute that slander on a dead man and poet. I find him singing in "The Nympholept":

"I think it was the same: some piercing sense Of Deity's pervasive immanence, The life that visible Nature doth indwell Grown great and near and all but palpable He might not linger but with winged strides Like one pursued, fled down the mountainsides."

Poems by Alan Seeger.

This reminds one instantly of the haunting Christ of Thompson's "The Hound of Heaven." And again in the presence of War's death the poet felt that other and greater presence without doubt, as these words prove:

"When to the last assault our bugles blow: Reckless of pain and peril we shall go, Heads high and hearts aflame and bayonets bare, And we shall brave eternity as though Eyes looked on us in which we would see fair-- One waited in whose presence we would wear, Even as a lover who would be well-seen, Our manhood faultless and our honor clean."

Poems by Alan Seeger.

And with magnificent acknowledgment of the divine plan of it all, of life and war and all, he sweeps that truly great poem, "The Hosts," to a swinging climax in its last tremendous stanza; which, fitting too, shall be the closing lines of this chapter on our dead American, martyred poet.

He first speaks of the marching columns of soldiers as "Big with the beauty of cosmic things. Mark how their columns surge!"

"With bayonets bare and flags unfurled, They scale the summits of the world--"

Poems by Alan Seeger.

And then:

"There was a stately drama writ By the hand that peopled the earth and air And set the stars in the infinite And made night gorgeous and morning fair, And all that had sense to reason knew That bloody drama must be gone through."

Poems by Alan Seeger.

ENGLISH POETS

JOHN OXENHAM

ALFRED NOYES

JOHN MASEFIELD

ROBERT SERVICE

RUPERT BROOKE

V

JOHN OXENHAM [Footnote: The poetical selections appearing in this chapter are used by permission, and are taken from the following works The Vision Splendid, All's Well, and The Fiery Cross Published by George H. Doran Company, New York.]

WHO MAKES ARTICULATE THE VOICE OF WAR, PEACE, THE CROSS, THE CHRIST.

In the first volume of The Student in Arms, that widely read book of the war, Donald Hankey has a chapter on "The Religion of the Inarticulate," in which he shows that the "Tommy" who for so long has been accused of having no religion, really has a very definite one. He has a religion that embraces all the Christian virtues, such as love, sacrifice, brotherhood, and comradeship, but he has never connected these with either Christ or the church. His religion is the "Religion of the Inarticulate." Hankey then shows that this war is articulating religion as never before.

John Oxenham, Poet-Preacher, is giving articulation to the voice of Christianity--a voice ringing out from over and above the thunder of the guns, the blare, the flare, the outcry, the hurt, the pain and anguish of the most awful war that earth has ever suffered. Some of us have been thinking of this war in terms of Christian hope. We have thought that we see in it a new Calvary out of which shall come a new resurrection to the spiritual world. We have dreamed that men are being redeemed through the sacrifice, through the spirit of service and brotherhood thrust upon the world by war's supreme demands. We have thought all of this, but we have not been able to make it articulate. Now comes a poet to do it for us.

What magnificent hope sings out, even in the titles that Oxenham has selected for his books in these days of darkness, anguish and lostness. After his first book, Bees in Amber, comes that warm handclasp of strength: that thrill of hope; that word of a watchman in the night, like a sentinel crying through the very title of his second book, "All's Well." Then came The Vision Splendid, and soon we are to have The Fiery Cross. The publishers were kind enough to let me examine this last book while it was still in the proof sheets. It is the one great hope book of the war. Every mother and father who has a boy in the war, every wife who has a husband, every child who has a father will thrill with a new pride and a new dignity after reading The Fiery Cross.

WAR AND ITS VOICE

No poet has voiced America's reasons for being in the war as has Oxenham, and nowhere does he do it better than in "Where Are You Going, Great-Heart?" the concluding stanza of which sums up compactly America's high purposes:

"Where are you going, Great-Heart? 'To set all burdened peoples free; To win for all God's liberty; To 'stablish His sweet Sovereignty.' God goeth with you, Great-Heart!"

The Vision Splendid.

To those who go to die in war the poet addresses himself in lines which he titles "On Eagle Wings":

"Higher than most, to you is given To live--or in His time, to die; So, bear you as White Knights of Heaven-- The very flower of chivalry! Take Him as Pilot by your side, And 'All is well' whate'er betide."

The Vision Splendid.

"If God be with you, who can be against you?" is the echo that we hear going and coming behind these great Christian lines. Indeed, behind every poem that Oxenham writes we can hear the echoes of some great scriptural word of promise, or hope or faith or courage. The Christian, as well as those who never saw the Bible or a church, will feel at home with this poet anywhere. The advantage that the Christian will have in reading him is that he will understand him better.

Turning to those who stay at home and have lost loved ones, with what sympathy and deep, tender understanding does he write in "To You Who Have Lost." You may almost see a great kindly father standing by your side, his warm hand in yours as he sings:

"I know! I know!-- The ceaseless ache, the emptiness, the woe-- The pang of loss-- The strength that sinks beneath so sore a cross. 'Heedless and careless, still the world wags on, And leaves me broken,... Oh, my son I my son!'"

"Yea--think of this!-- Yea, rather think on this!-- He died as few men get the chance to die-- Fighting to save a world's morality. He died the noblest death a man may die, Fighting for God, and Right, and Liberty-- And such a death is Immortality."

All's Well.

If those who have lost loved ones "Over There" cannot be buoyed by that, I know not what will buoy them, what will comfort.

Oxenham too gives us a picture of a battlefield where birds sing and roses bloom, just as do Service and several other poets who have been in the midst of the conflict. We have become familiar with this picture, but no writer yet has caught its full, eternal meaning and pressed it down into three lines for the world as has this man; in "Here, There, and Everywhere":

"Man proposes--God disposes; Yet our hope in Him reposes Who in war-time still makes roses."

The Fiery Cross.

But this poet in his interpretation of war does not forget peace; does not forget that it is coming; does not forget that the world is hungry for it; does not forget that it is the duty of the poets and the thinking men and women of the world not only to get ready for it, but to lead the way to it.

PEACE AND ITS VOICE

In a remarkable poem called "Watchman! What of the Night?" we see this great heart standing sentinel on the walls of the world, watching the midnight skies red with the blaze and glow of carnage:

"Watchman! What of the night? No light we see; Our souls are bruised and sickened with the sight Of this foul crime against humanity. The Ways are dark--- 'I SEE THE MORNING LIGHT!'

* * * * *

"Beyond the war-clouds and the reddened ways, I see the promise of the Coming Days! I see His sun rise, new charged with grace, Earth's tears to dry and all her woes efface! Christ lives! Christ loves! Christ rules! No more shall Might, Though leagued with all the forces of the Night, Ride over Right. No more shall Wrong The world's gross agonies prolong. Who waits His time shall surely see The triumph of His Constancy; When, without let, or bar, or stay, The coming of His Perfect Day Shall sweep the Powers of Night away; And Faith replumed for nobler flight, And Hope aglow with radiance bright, And Love in loveliness bedight SHALL GREET THE MORNING LIGHT."

All's Well.

Then, as is most fair and logical, the poet tells us how we are to build again after peace comes. We must needs know that. The newspapers are full of a certain popular move--and success to it--to rebuild the destroyed cities of France and Belgium. But the rebuilding that the poet speaks of in "The Winnowing" is a deeper thing. It is a spiritual rebuilding without which there is no permanent peace in the world and no permanent safety for the material world.

"How shall we start, Lord, to build life again, Fairer and sweeter, and freed from its pain? 'Build ye in Me and your building shall be Builded for Time and Eternity.'"

All's Well.

There is the answer to the world's cry in short, sharp, succinct lines; compact as a biblical phrase; and as meaningful. Hearken it, ye world! Only in Him can the new spiritual world be built for "Time and Eternity." And only to those who so believe and hold shall the world belong henceforth. At least so says our poet:

"To whom shall the world henceforth belong And who shall go up and possess it?"

which question he himself answers in the same verse:

"To the Men of Good Fame Who everything claim-- This world and the next--in their Master's great name--

"To these shall the world henceforth belong, And they shall go up and possess it; Overmuch, overlong, has the world suffered wrong, We are here by God's help to redress it."

The Fiery Cross.

And finally in this fight for peace he does not forget prayer, and in "The Prayer Immortal," which is introduced, as are so many of Oxenham's poems, by a phrase from the Bible, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done," he admonishes those who seek peace:

"So--to your knees--And, with your heart and soul, pray God That wars may cease, And earth, by His good will, Through these rough ways, find peace!"

The Fiery Cross.

THE CROSS AND ITS VOICE

The voice of the cross of Calvary is being heard this day of war as it has never been heard before. The world is resonant with its message. Every soldier, every nation, every home, every mother and father and child and wife who has suffered because of this war, shall henceforth understand the Christ and his cross the better. All through this writer's interpretations of the war we find the cross to the fore. To him the cross symbolizes the war. This war is the cross in a deep and abiding sense. In "Through the Valley" he says:

"And there of His radiant company, Full many a one I see, Who has won through the Valley of Shadows To the larger liberty. Even there in the grace of the heavenly place, It is joy to meet mine own, And to know that not one but has valiantly won, By the way of the Cross, his crown."

The Vision Splendid.

Thank God for that hope! Thank God for that word!

In "The Ballad of Jim Baxter" this same thought is more vividly and strongly set forth. It is the story of one type of German cruelty of which we have heard in the war dispatches several times and that have been confirmed on the spot; the story of the Germans nailing men to crosses. Jim Baxter suffered this experience:

"When Jim came to, he found himself Nailed to a cross of wood, Just like the Christs you find out there On every country road.

"He wondered dully if he'd died, And so, become a Christ; 'Perhaps,' he thought, 'all men are Christs When they are crucified.'"

The Vision Splendid.

And in this homely lad's homely way of putting his cruel experience who knows but that there may be such truth as yet we cannot see in the dark chaos of war?

THE CHRIST AND HIS VOICE

It isn't a far step from the cross to the Christ of the cross, and in this man's poetry the two mingle and commingle so closely that one overlaps the other. But always these two things stand out--the cross and the Christ. And in the new volume, The Fiery Cross, one finds many pages devoted to this great thought alone.