..
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."
Poems by Alan Seeger.
This reminds one instantly of the haunting Christ of Thompson's "The
Hound of Heaven." And again in the presence of War's death the poet
felt that other and greater presence without doubt, as these words
prove:
"When to the last assault our bugles blow:
Reckless of pain and peril we shall go,
Heads high and hearts aflame and bayonets bare,
And we shall brave eternity as though
Eyes looked on us in which we would see fair--
One waited in whose presence we would wear,
Even as a lover who would be well-seen,
Our manhood faultless and our honor clean.
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