Part 5

The week in the trenches was a week of the most beautiful weather. . . . These days were saddened by the death of poor Colette in the bombardment, and by the suffering of his brother who has now returned after the burial. They were marked on the other hand by two afternoons of rather memorable emotion. Exasperated by the inactivity of the sector here, and tempted by danger, I stole off twice after guard, and made a patrol all by myself through the wood paths and trails between the lines. In the front of these, at a crossing of paths not far from one of our posts, I found a burnt rocket-stick planted in the ground, and a scrap of paper stuck in the top, placed there by the boches to guide their little mischief-making parties when they come to visit us in the night. The scrap of paper was nothing else than a bit of the 'Berliner Tageblatt'. This seemed so interesting to me that I reported it to the captain, though my going out alone this way is a thing strictly forbidden. He was very decent about it though, and seemed really interested in the information. Yesterday afternoon I repeated this exploit, following another trail, and I went so far that I came clear up to the German barbed wire, where I left a card with my name. It was very thrilling work, "courting destruction with taunts, with invitations" as Whitman would say. I have never been in a sector like this, where patrols could be made in daylight. Here the deep forest permits it. It also greatly facilitates ambushes, for one must keep to the paths, owing to the underbrush. I and a few others are going to try to get permission to go out on 'patrouilles d'embuscade' and bring in some live prisoners. It would be quite an extraordinary feat if we could pull it off. In our present existence it is the only way I can think of to get the Croix de Guerre. And to be worthy of my marraine I think that I ought to have the Croix de Guerre.

He had hoped to have been in Paris on Decoration Day, May 30th, to read, before the statue of Lafayette and Washington, the "Ode in Memory of the American Volunteers Fallen for France", which he had written at the request of a Committee of American residents; but his "permission" unfortunately did not arrive in time. Completed in two days, during which he was engaged in the hardest sort of labour in the trenches, this Ode is certainly the crown of the poet's achievement. It is entirely admirable, entirely adequate to the historic occasion. If the war has produced a nobler utterance, it has not come my way. On June 24th, he again wrote, giving an account of a march, which was "without exception the hardest he had ever made" -- "20 kilometers through the blazing sun and in a cloud of dust. Something around 30 kilograms on the back. About 50 per cent dropped by the way. By making a supreme effort, I managed to get in at the finish, with the fifteen men that were all that was left of the section." He now knew that the great offensive was imminent. "The situation," he wrote, "is most interesting and exciting, but I am not at liberty to say anything about it. My greatest preoccupation now is whether this affair is coming off before or after the 4th of July. The indications are that it is going to break very soon. In that case nothing doing in the way of permission. But I still have hopes of getting in."

His hopes of getting to Paris were frustrated, as were all his other hopes save one--the hope of

That rare privilege of dying well.

On July 1st, the great advance began. At six in the evening of July 4th, the Legion was ordered to clear the enemy out of the village of Belloy-en-Santerre. Alan Seeger advanced in the first rush, and his squad was enfiladed by the fire of six German machine guns, concealed in a hollow way. Most of them went down, and Alan among them -- wounded in several places. But the following waves of attack were more fortunate. As his comrades came up to him, Alan cheered them on; and as they left him behind, they heard him singing a marching-song in English: --

Accents of ours were in the fierce melee.

They took the village, they drove the invaders out; but for some reason unknown--perhaps a very good one -- the battlefield was left unvisited that night. Next morning, Alan Seeger lay dead.

There is little to add. He wrote his own best epitaph in the "Ode": --

And on those furthest rims of hallowed ground Where the forlorn, the gallant charge expires, When the slain bugler has long ceased to sound, And on the tangled wires The last wild rally staggers, crumbles, stops, Withered beneath the shrapnel's iron showers: -- Now heaven be thanked, we gave a few brave drops, Now heaven be thanked, a few brave drops were ours.

His death was briefly noticed in one or two French papers. The 'Matin' published a translation of part of the poem, "Champagne, 1914-15", and remarked that "Cyrano de Bergerac would have signed it." But France had no time, even if she had had the knowledge, to realize the greatness of the sacrifice that had been made for her. That will come later. One day France will know that this unassuming soldier of the Legion,

Who, not unmindful of the antique debt, Came back the generous path of Lafayette,

was one whom even she may be proud to have reckoned among her defenders.

The "Last Poems" speak for themselves. They contain lines which he would doubtless have remodelled had he lived to review them in tranquillity -- perhaps one or two pieces, sprung from a momentary mood, which, on reflection he would have rejected.* But they not only show a great advance on his earlier work: they rank high, or I am much mistaken, among the hitherto not very numerous poems in the English language produced, not in mere memory or imagination of war, but in its actual stress and under its haunting menace.

* Neither in the "Juvenilia" nor in the "Last Poems" has anything been suppressed that he himself ever thought of publishing. Indeed nothing at all has been omitted, except two early poems on which he had written "These are worthless."

Again and again in the "Last Poems"--notably in "Maktoob" with its tribute to

The resignation and the calm And wisdom of the East,

he returns to the note of fatalism. Here he has not only the wisdom of the East but the logic of the West on his side. Necessity is as incontrovertible to thought as it is incredible to feeling. But in the potent illusion of free-will (if illusion it be) rests all morality and all the admiration that we feel for good and evil deeds. Not even at Alan Seeger's bidding can we quite persuade ourselves that, when he took up arms for France, he was exercising no brave, no generous choice, but was the conscript of Destiny.

William Archer.

Poems by Alan Seeger

Juvenilia

1914

An Ode to Natural Beauty

There is a power whose inspiration fills Nature's fair fabric, sun- and star-inwrought, Like airy dew ere any drop distils, Like perfume in the laden flower, like aught Unseen which interfused throughout the whole Becomes its quickening pulse and principle and soul. Now when, the drift of old desire renewing, Warm tides flow northward over valley and field, When half-forgotten sound and scent are wooing From their deep-chambered recesses long sealed Such memories as breathe once more Of childhood and the happy hues it wore, Now, with a fervor that has never been In years gone by, it stirs me to respond, -- Not as a force whose fountains are within The faculties of the percipient mind, Subject with them to darkness and decay, But something absolute, something beyond, Oft met like tender orbs that seem to peer From pale horizons, luminous behind Some fringe of tinted cloud at close of day; And in this flood of the reviving year, When to the loiterer by sylvan streams, Deep in those cares that make Youth loveliest, Nature in every common aspect seems To comment on the burden in his breast -- The joys he covets and the dreams he dreams -- One then with all beneath the radiant skies That laughs with him or sighs, It courses through the lilac-scented air, A blessing on the fields, a wonder everywhere.

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: Him whom the Muse hath made thy votary Not from her paths and gentle precepture Shall vulgar ends engage, nor break the spell That taught him first to feel thy secret charms And o'er the earth, obedient to their lure, Their sweet surprise and endless miracle, To follow ever with insatiate arms. On summer afternoons, When from the blue horizon to the shore, Casting faint silver pathways like the moon's Across the Ocean's glassy, mottled floor, Far clouds uprear their gleaming battlements Drawn to the crest of some bleak eminence, When autumn twilight fades on the sere hill And autumn winds are still; To watch the East for some emerging sign, Wintry Capella or the Pleiades Or that great huntsman with the golden gear; Ravished in hours like these Before thy universal shrine To feel the invoked presence hovering near, He stands enthusiastic. Star-lit hours Spent on the roads of wandering solitude Have set their sober impress on his brow, And he, with harmonies of wind and wood And torrent and the tread of mountain showers, Has mingled many a dedicative vow That holds him, till thy last delight be known, Bound in thy service and in thine alone.

I, too, among the visionary throng Who choose to follow where thy pathway leads, Have sold my patrimony for a song, And donned the simple, lowly pilgrim's weeds. From that first image of beloved walls, Deep-bowered in umbrage of ancestral trees, Where earliest thy sweet enchantment falls, Tingeing a child's fantastic reveries With radiance so fair it seems to be Of heavens just lost the lingering evidence From that first dawn of roseate infancy, So long beneath thy tender influence My breast has thrilled. As oft for one brief second The veil through which those infinite offers beckoned Has seemed to tremble, letting through Some swift intolerable view Of vistas past the sense of mortal seeing, So oft, as one whose stricken eyes might see In ferny dells the rustic deity, I stood, like him, possessed, and all my being, Flooded an instant with unwonted light, Quivered with cosmic passion; whether then On woody pass or glistening mountain-height I walked in fellowship with winds and clouds, Whether in cities and the throngs of men, A curious saunterer through friendly crowds, Enamored of the glance in passing eyes, Unuttered salutations, mute replies, -- In every character where light of thine Has shed on earthly things the hue of things divine I sought eternal Loveliness, and seeking, If ever transport crossed my brow bespeaking Such fire as a prophetic heart might feel Where simple worship blends in fervent zeal, It was the faith that only love of thee Needed in human hearts for Earth to see Surpassed the vision poets have held dear Of joy diffused in most communion here; That whomsoe'er thy visitations warmed, Lover of thee in all thy rays informed, Needed no difficulter discipline To seek his right to happiness within Than, sensible of Nature's loveliness, To yield him to the generous impulses By such a sentiment evoked. The thought, Bright Spirit, whose illuminings I sought, That thou unto thy worshipper might be An all-sufficient law, abode with me, Importing something more than unsubstantial dreams To vigils by lone shores and walks by murmuring streams.

Youth's flowers like childhood's fade and are forgot. Fame twines a tardy crown of yellowing leaves. How swift were disillusion, were it not That thou art steadfast where all else deceives! Solace and Inspiration, Power divine That by some mystic sympathy of thine, When least it waits and most hath need of thee, Can startle the dull spirit suddenly With grandeur welled from unsuspected springs, -- Long as the light of fulgent evenings, When from warm showers the pearly shades disband And sunset opens o'er the humid land, Shows thy veiled immanence in orient skies, -- Long as pale mist and opalescent dyes Hung on far isle or vanishing mountain-crest, Fields of remote enchantment can suggest So sweet to wander in it matters nought, They hold no place but in impassioned thought, Long as one draught from a clear sky may be A scented luxury; Be thou my worship, thou my sole desire, Thy paths my pilgrimage, my sense a lyre Aeolian for thine every breath to stir; Oft when her full-blown periods recur, To see the birth of day's transparent moon Far from cramped walls may fading afternoon Find me expectant on some rising lawn; Often depressed in dewy grass at dawn, Me, from sweet slumber underneath green boughs, Ere the stars flee may forest matins rouse, Afoot when the great sun in amber floods Pours horizontal through the steaming woods And windless fumes from early chimneys start And many a cock-crow cheers the traveller's heart Eager for aught the coming day afford In hills untopped and valleys unexplored. Give me the white road into the world's ends, Lover of roadside hazard, roadside friends, Loiterer oft by upland farms to gaze On ample prospects, lost in glimmering haze At noon, or where down odorous dales twilit, Filled with low thundering of the mountain stream, Over the plain where blue seas border it The torrid coast-towns gleam.

I have fared too far to turn back now; my breast Burns with the lust for splendors unrevealed, Stars of midsummer, clouds out of the west, Pallid horizons, winds that valley and field Laden with joy, be ye my refuge still! What though distress and poverty assail! Though other voices chide, yours never will. The grace of a blue sky can never fail. Powers that my childhood with a spell so sweet, My youth with visions of such glory nursed, Ye have beheld, nor ever seen my feet On any venture set, but 'twas the thirst 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!

The Deserted Garden