Poems | Page 6

is still wonderfully impressive, and still the great silver cones
of Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl look down upon it from their
immaculate altitudes.
Though well within the tropics, the great elevation of the city (7400
feet) renders its climate very attractive to those for whom height has no
terrors; and the Seegers soon became greatly attached to it. For two

very happy years, it was the home of the whole family. The children
had a tutor whom they respected and loved, and who helped to develop
their taste for poetry and good literature. "One of our keenest
pleasures," writes one of the family, "was to go in a body to the old
book-shops, and on Sunday morning to the `Thieves Market', to
rummage for treasures; and many were the Elzevirs and worm-eaten,
vellum-bound volumes from the old convent libraries that fell into our
hands. At that time we issued a home magazine called `The Prophet', in
honour of a large painting that we had acquired and chose to consider
as the patron of our household. The magazine was supposed to appear
monthly, but was always months behind its time. Alan was the sporting
editor, but his literary ability had even then begun to appear, and he
overstepped his department with contributions of poetry and lengthy
essays. No copies of this famous periodical are extant: they all went
down in the wreck of the `Merida'."
In the chilly days of winter, frequent visits were paid to the lower levels
of the `tierra templada', especially to Cuernavaca, one of the "show"
places of the country. The children learned to ride and to cycle, and
were thus able to extend their excursions on all sides. When, after two
years, they went back to the United States to school, they were already
familiar with Mexican nature and life; and they kept their impressions
fresh by frequent vacation visits. It must have been a delightful
experience to slip down every now and then to the tropics: first to pass
under the pink walls of Morro Castle into the wide lagoon of Havana;
then to cross the Spanish Main to Vera Cruz; then, after skirting the
giant escarpment of Orizaba, to crawl zigzagging up the almost
precipitous ascent that divides the `tierra templada' from the `tierra fria';
and finally to speed through the endless agave-fields of the upland
haciendas, to Mexico City and home.
Mexico, and the experiences associated with it, have left deep marks on
Alan Seeger's poetry. The vacation voyages thither speak in this
apostrophe from the "Ode to Antares": Star of the South that now
through orient mist At nightfall off Tampico or Belize Greetest the
sailor, rising from those seas Where first in me, a fond romanticist, The
tropic sunset's bloom on cloudy piles Cast out industrious cares with
dreams of fabulous isles. . . .
The longest of his poems, "The Deserted Garden" -- a veritable gallery

of imaginative landscape -- is entirely Mexican in colouring. Indeed we
may conjecture without too much rashness that it is a mere expansion
of the sonnet entitled "Tezcotzinco", the fruit of a solitary excursion to
the ruins of Nezahualcoyotl's baths, in the hills beyond Tezcoco. But
even where there is no painting of definite Mexican scenes, motives
from the vast uplands with their cloud pageantry, and from the
palm-fringed, incandescent coasts, frequently recur in his verse. For
instance, he had not forgotten Mexico when he wrote in a volume of
the Comtesse de Noailles: Be my companion under cool arcades That
frame some drowsy street and dazzling square, Beyond whose flowers
and palm-tree promenades White belfries burn in the blue tropic air.
And even when the tropics were finally left behind, he carried with him
in his memory their profusion of colour, an ever-ready palette on which
to draw. Assuredly it was a fortunate chance that took this lover of
sunlight and space and splendor, in his most receptive years, to regions
where they superabound. Perhaps, had he been confined to gloomier
climates, he could not have written: From a boy I gloated on existence.
Earth to me Seemed all-sufficient, and my sojourn there One trembling
opportunity for joy.
But the same good fortune pursued him throughout. He seemed
predestined to environments of beauty. When, at fourteen, he left his
Mexican home, it was to go to the Hackley School at Tarrytown, N.Y.,
an institution placed on a high hill overlooking that noblest of rivers,
the Hudson, and surrounded by a domain of its own, extending to many
acres of meadow and woodland. An attack of scarlet fever in his
childhood had left his health far from robust, and it was thought that the
altitude of Mexico City was too great for him. He therefore spent one
of his vacations among the hills of New Hampshire, and