Poems | Page 4

in the plenitude of his exultant strength, with eye
undimmed and pulse unslackening, he met the death he had voluntarily
challenged, in the cause of the land he loved, and in the moment of
victory. Again and again, both in prose and in verse, he had said that
this seemed to him a good death to die; and two years of unflinching
endurance of self-imposed hardship and danger had proved that he
meant what he said.
I do not, I repeat, pretend to measure him with Shelley, Byron or Keats,
though I think none of them would have disdained his gift of song. But
assuredly he is of their fellowship in virtue, not only of his early death,
but of his whole-hearted devotion to the spirit of Romance, as they
understood it. From his boyhood upward, his one passion was for
beauty; and it was in the guise of Romance that beauty revealed itself
to him. He was from the first determined not only to write but to live
Romance, and when fate threw in his way a world-historic opportunity,
he seized it with delight. He knew that he was dicing with Death, but
that was the very essence of his ideal; and he knew that if Death won
the throw, his ideal was crowned and consummated, for ever safe from
the withering touch of time, or accidental soilure. If it had been given
to Swinburne to fall, rifle in hand, on, say, the field of Mentana, we
should have been the poorer by many splendid verses, but the richer by
a heroic life-story. And would his lot have been the less enviable? Nay,
surely, much the more. That is the thought which may well bring solace
to those who loved Alan Seeger, and who may at first have felt as an
unmixed cruelty the cutting short of so eager, so generous, so gallant a
life.
The description "Juvenilia" attached to the first series of these poems is
of his own choosing. It is for the reader to judge what allowance is to
be made for unripeness, whether of substance or of form. Criticism is

none of my present business. But I think no discerning reader can fail
to be impressed by one great virtue pervading all the poet's work -- its
absolute sincerity. There is no pose, no affectation of any sort. There
are marks of the loving study of other poets, and these the best. We are
frequently reminded of this singer and of that. The young American is
instinctively loyal to the long tradition of English literature. He is
content to undergo the influence of the great masters, and does not seek
for premature originality on the by-paths of eccentricity. But while he
is the disciple of many, he is the vassal of none. His matter is always
his own, the fruit of personal vision, experience, imagination, even if
he may now and then unconsciously pour it into a mould provided by
another. He is no mere echo of the rhythms of this poet, or mimic of
that other's attitude and outlook. The great zest of living which inspires
him is far too real and intense to clothe itself in the trappings of any
alien individuality. He is too straightforward to be even dramatic. It is
not his instinct to put on a mask, even for purposes of artistic
personation, and much less of affectation.
If ever there was a being who said "Yea" to life, accepted it as a
glorious gift, and was determined to live it with all his might, it was
Alan Seeger. Such a frame of mind is too instinctive and
temperamental to be called optimism. It is not the result of a balancing
of good and ill, and a reasoned decision that good preponderates.
Rather it is a direct perception, an intuition, of the beauty and wonder
of the universe -- an intuition too overpowering to be seriously
disturbed by the existence of pain and evil, some of which, at any rate,
has its value as a foil, a background, to joy. This was the message -- not
a philosophy but an irresistible emotion -- which he sought to deliver
through the medium of an art which he seriously studied and deeply
loved. It spoke from the very depths of his being, and the poems in
which it found utterance, whatever their purely literary qualities, have
at least the value of a first-hand human document, the sincere
self-portraiture of a vivid and virile soul.
There are three more or less clearly-marked elements in a poet's
equipment -- observation, passion, reflection, or in simpler terms,
seeing, feeling and thinking. The first two are richly represented in the
following poems, the third, as was natural, much less so. The poet was
too fully occupied in