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."