Giant Hours with Poet Preachers

by William L. Stidger

Poems by Alan Seeger.

And while we are listening to the music of these human stars, the music of the celestial spheres set down in human words, let us catch again the poetic echo of that third line and let it linger long as we listen, "Rise from the foam of Nature's sunlit ocean," and

"Forget it not till the crowns are crumbled,
Till the swords of the kings are rent with rust;
Forget it not till the hills lie humbled,
And the Springs of the seas run dust,"

that, as Edwin Markham sings, this echo is the echo of the eternal poetic music.

With these wondrous lines he answers the question which he himself asks in "Fragments," "What is Success?"

"Out of the endless ore
Of deep desire to coin the utmost gold
Of passionate memory: to have lived so well
That the fifth moon, when it swims up once more
Through orchard boughs where mating orioles build
And apple trees unfold,
Find not of that dear need that all things tell
The heart unburdened nor the arms unfilled."

Poems by Alan Seeger.

Joy comes next in our treatment of the outstanding singings of this singing poet, and he himself has given us the connecting link in the following lines:

"He has drained as well
Joy's perfumed bowl and cried as I have cried:
Be Fame their mistress whom Love passes by."

Poems by Alan Seeger.