"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 G.o.d"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 ill.u.s.trates also most strongly his att.i.tude toward Death, is that poem ent.i.tled "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.
"G.o.d 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 G.o.d
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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.d-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 a.s.sault 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 b.l.o.o.d.y drama must be gone through."
Poems by Alan Seeger.
ENGLISH POETS
JOHN OXENHAM
ALFRED NOYES
JOHN MASEFIELD
ROBERT SERVICE
RUPERT BROOKE
[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN OXENHAM.]
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 t.i.tles 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 t.i.tle 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 G.o.d"s liberty; To "stablish His sweet Sovereignty."
G.o.d goeth with you, Great-Heart!"
The Vision Splendid.
To those who go to die in war the poet addresses himself in lines which he t.i.tles "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."