"
Poems by Alan Seeger.
And with magnificent acknowledgment of the divine plan of it all, of
life and war and all, he sweeps that truly great poem, "The Hosts,"
to a swinging climax in its last tremendous stanza; which, fitting too,
shall be the closing lines of this chapter on our dead American,
martyred poet.
He first speaks of the marching columns of soldiers as "Big with the
beauty of cosmic things. Mark how their columns surge!"
"With bayonets bare and flags unfurled,
They scale the summits of the world--"
Poems by Alan Seeger.
And then:
"There was a stately drama writ
By the hand that peopled the earth and air
And set the stars in the infinite
And made night gorgeous and morning fair,
And all that had sense to reason knew
That bloody drama must be gone through."
Poems by Alan Seeger.
ENGLISH POETS
JOHN OXENHAM
ALFRED NOYES
JOHN MASEFIELD
ROBERT SERVICE
RUPERT BROOKE
[Illustration: JOHN OXENHAM.]
V
JOHN OXENHAM
[Footnote: The poetical selections appearing in this chapter are used
by permission, and are taken from the following works The Vision
Splendid, All's Well, and The Fiery Cross Published by George H. Doran
Company, New York.]
WHO MAKES ARTICULATE THE VOICE OF WAR, PEACE, THE CROSS, THE CHRIST.
In the first volume of The Student in Arms, that widely read book of
the war, Donald Hankey has a chapter on "The Religion of the
Inarticulate," in which he shows that the "Tommy" who for so long has
been accused of having no religion, really has a very definite one.
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