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.