ARMORY
August 5th, 1917
Father John Kelly had me meet Joyce Kilmer this evening. Nothing of the long-haired variety about him—a sturdy fellow, manly, humorous, interesting. He was a little shame-faced at first, for he had told Father Kelly that he was going to join up with the 69th and he is now in the 7th. “I went to the Armory twice,” he said, “but failed to find the recruiting officer.” I told him that if we could not have him in the 69th the next best place was the 7th, but he still wants to return to his first love, so I shall be glad to arrange it. If he left the whole matter up to my decision he would stay home and look after his large family and let men with fewer responsibilities undertake this task, at least until such time as the country would have need of every man. But he is bound to do his share and do it at once, so there is no use taking off the fine edge of his enthusiasm. He is going about this thing in exactly the same spirit that led him to enter the Church. He sees what he considers a plain duty, and he is going ahead to perform it, calm and clear eyed and without the slightest regard to what the consequences may be.
I shall be glad to have him with us personally for the pleasure of his companionship, and also for the sake of the regiment to have a poet and historian who will confer upon us the gift of immortality. I compared him with the old lad that one lot of Greeks sent to another to stir them to victory by his songs; and he wagged a pair of vigorous protesting legs at me to show he was no cripple. So I tried him with a quotation from a poet that no poet could ever resist; and with some reservations about the words “Grey Bard” I managed to drive my compliment home:
For not to have been dipt in Lethe’s lake
Could make the son of Thetis not to die;
But that grey bard did him immortal make
With verses dipt in dews of Castaly.