Poems by Alan Seeger.
What a challenge this is to all who must die in this war, to all lads who are giving their lives heroically in God's great cause of liberty in his world—this challenge to die so that you may be welcomed into the fraternity of heroes!
Without doubt Seeger's best-known poem, and one which illustrates also most strongly his attitude toward Death, is that poem entitled "I Have a Rendezvous With Death," from which we quote:
"I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade;
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple blossoms fill the air—
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.
* * * * *
"God knows, 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear,…
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town;
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous."
Poems by Alan Seeger.
THE SONG OF GOD
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."