I can detect no orthodox Christian
message in either of their dreamings, but I do find in both poets a
clean, high moral message, and therefore give them place in this pulpit
of the poets.
The wide range of this young American's writing astonishes the reader.
He died very young: while the morning sun was just lifting its head
above the eastern horizon of life; while the heavens were still
crimson, and gold, and rose, and fire. What he might have written in
the steady white heat of noontime and in life's glorious afternoon of
experience, and in its subtle charm of "sunset and the evening star,"
one can only guess. But while he lived he lived; and, living, wrote. He
dipped his pen in that same gold and fire of the only part of life he
knew, its daybreak, and wrote. No wonder his writing was warm; no
wonder he wrote of Youth, Beauty, Fame, Joy, Love, Death, and God.
THE SONG OF YOUTH
Nor Byron, nor Shelley, nor Keats, nor Swinburne, nor Brooke, nor any
other poet ever sounded the heights and depths and glory of Youth as
did Seeger. He sang it as he breathed it and lived it, and just as
naturally. His singing of it was as rhythmic as breathing, and as sweet
as the first song of an oriole in springtime. In his fifth sonnet, a
form in which he loved to write and of which he was a master, he sings
youth in terms "almost divine":
"Phantoms of bliss that beckon and recede--,
Thy strange allurements, City that I love,
Maze of romance, where I have followed too
The dream Youth treasures of its dearest need
And stars beyond thy towers bring tidings of.
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