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Show ! " it .-...,.: 7 '"77,7 ' 7-7 " ' " 1 sszz - . - i . i . : S ' ! r I t i )" - ' - L "i By ELMO SCOTT WATSON (Keleased by Western Newspaper Union.) IN A world aflame with war, the thoughts of Americans on Armistice Day, 1940, inevitably turn to that November day 22 years ago when World War I ended. In Arlington national cemetery near Washington stands the symbol of our participation in that conflict the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Sol-dier. One of our greatest patriotic shrines, it is not only a memorial to those whose graves in foreign soil are marked "Unknown," but in a larger sense it is also a monument to the 50,000 who gave their lives in that earlier fight against the threat of dictatorial dicta-torial power. Among them were a few who, unknowingly, erected memorials to themselves which seem destined to be as enduring as the white marble of the tomb in Arlington. For they were the soldier poets who, before a bullet or shell fragment wrote "Finis" to their careers, composed some bit of deathless verse which is now and always will be associated with their names. In 1936, when Frederic W. Ziv compiled an anthology of poems by poets who were killed in 1914 to 1918, his book, "The Valiant Muse," contained the work of 59 young Englishmen and Americans. Ameri-cans. All -of these 59 are known to a few poetry-lovers; perhaps half of them are familiar names to students of literature; but to the English-speaking world generally gen-erally four of their names have become as familiar as the names of famous bards who sang in earlier ear-lier and more peaceful times. They are two Americans, Alan Seeger and Joyce Kilmer, an Englishman, Rupert Brooke, and a Canadian, John McCrae. Although each of the four wrote considerable verse, in each case there is one poem which is inevitably in-evitably and invariably associated asso-ciated with the name of its author. au-thor. To think of Alan Seeger is to think of "I Have a Rendezvous With Death," which was prophetic prophet-ic of the fate of the poet if not of the fate of the poem. Seeger was a young Harvard graduate who was studying in Paris at the outbreak out-break of the war in 1914 and who enlisted in the French Foreign Legion. Wounded in action, he was recuperating in a French hospital when he wrote the poem which made him famous. It was I have a rendezvous with death At some disputed barricade. When spring comes round with rustling shade And apple blossoms fill the air. I have a rendezvous with death When spring brings back blue days and air. It may be he shall take my hand And lead me into his dark land And close my eyes and quench my breath; It may be I shall pass him stilL I have a rendezvous with death On some 6carred slope of battered hill. When spring comes round again this year And the first meadow flowers appear. God knows 'twer better to be deep Pillowed in silk and scented down. Where love throbs out in blissful sleep. Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath. Where hushed awakenings are dear. 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 and true, I shall not fail that rendezvous. Back in service again, in 1916, Seeger was invited to write a poem and read it at the Memorial day ceremony in Paris which had been arranged for the American volunteers who had died for France. Seeger worked feverishly feverish-ly to finish the poem in time. Memorial day came but it brought no word to Seeger that his application for leave of absence ab-sence to go to Paris for the ceremony cere-mony had been granted. Later it was learned that a careless clerk had confused Memorial day with the other American patriotic holiday of Independence day and had obtained the leave of absence for that date. But Seeger was not destined to enjoy his leave on Independence day, for he had a "rendezvous with death" which he could not fail to keep. On July 4, 1916, there was a burst of German machine gun fire at Belloy-en-Santerre and one of the men who went down in the hail of death was the young soldier-poet. There is a touch of pathos in the fact that Alan Seeger will keep his rendezvous with death for all eternity in an unmarked grave. Several months later his regiment returned to Belloy-en-Santerre to find that the entire landscape had been so changed by bombardment that not even the "scarred slope of battered hill" where he died could be recognized rec-ognized and all efforts since then to identify the site of his burial place have been unsuccessful. Like Seeger, Rupert Brooke wrote a poem that was prophetic of his death and that contributed most to his fame. Those who BALLAD OF BARDS AND ACES. I wonder in what star-flowered nook Young Aian Seeger sings his song In what Elysium Rupert Brooke Breathes forth his music ail day long. For from a world that fihts with Wrong Does Byron dream of Freedom's sway, And Keats and Shelley join the throng; Where sings each bard of yesterday? yester-day? Say, where does brave Resnati soar Above the haunts of earthly men; Or where, beyond the cannon's roar, Great Guynemer rides forth again? Does Lufbery sweep some heavenly glen Like Phaeton of ancient day, And Vernon Castle meet them then; Where flies each ace of yesterday? John M. McGough in the New York Times. knew this young Englishman remember re-member that, so striking was his physical appearance and so buoyant were his spirits, it was "like a wind from heaven" when he entered a room. Harriet Monroe Mon-roe called him "the lyric Apollo" and his brother-poet, William Butler But-ler Yeats, said he was "the most beautiful young man in England." But the world remembers him as the writer of this exquisite sonnet: son-net: THE SOLDIER If I should die, think only this of me, That there's some corner of a foreign field That is forever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; con-cealed; A dust which England bore, shaped, made aware; Gave once her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England's, breathing English air. Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. And think, this heart, all evil shed away. A pulse in the eternal mind no less. Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Her sights and sounds, dreams happy as her day: And laughter learnt of friends, and gentleness. In hearts at peace, under an English haven. Out of the horror of the Battle of Ypres came another poem which has made the name of its author famous. He was Lieut. Col. John McCrae, commander of the medical department of Canadian Cana-dian Hospital No. 3, a McGill university uni-versity unit. Innumerable times during the 16 days of that battle McCrae watched the burial of the dead and saw the white crosses erected over their graves. Then in the spring he saw the poppies trying to cover the tortured earth with their scarlet glory and he wrote IN FLANDERS FIELDS In Flanders fields the poppies grow Between the crosses, row on row. That mark our place. While in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly, Unheard amid the guns below. We are the dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunsets glow. Loved and were loved but, now, we lie In Flanders fields! Take up our quarrel with the foe! To you. from falling hands, we throw The torch Be yours to bear it hlghl If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies blow In Flanders fields. McCrae's poem was translated translat-ed into every language spoken by the Allied forces. It became a symbol of the determination to "carry on" and before its author's au-thor's death in January, 1918, this Canadian soldier's neighbors, the Americans, as well as thousands of his fellow-Canadians and other citizens of the British empire had heeded his injunction to "take up our fight." McCrae was stricken with pneumonia at his post of duty and died in a hospital in Boulogne. He was buried in the cemetery at Wimereux, on a sunny slope, facing the sunset and the sea, where red poppies grow among the white crosses, one of which marks the last resting place of John McCrae. The second American soldier-poet soldier-poet who died in France and whose name is best remembered because of one poem was Joyce Kilmer. It is a curious fact, however, how-ever, that it was written before he became a soldier and it was not a war poem. A graduate from Columbia university in 1908, Kilmer held various journalistic jobs before joining the staff ot the New York Times in 1913. In that year Harriet Monroe's Poe1-ry: Poe1-ry: A Magazine of Verse printed the poem which was to make Ki) mer famous. It was TREES I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree; A tree whose hungry mouth Is press I Against the earth's sweet flowing breast: A tree that looks at God all day And lifts her leafy arms to pray; A tree that may in summer wear A nest of robins in her hair; Upon whose bosom snow has lain; Who intimately lives with rain. Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree. Kilmer was paid $7 for this poem a few years ago the manuscript manu-script of it was sold for $600. At the outbreak of the World war Kilmer was more sympathetic to the German side than that of the Allies because the former was more unpopular in this country. But he quickly changed after the sinking of the Lusitania and he wrote a poem about this event which was widely reprinted in both America and Europe. Called "The White Ships and the Red," it portrayed the arrival of tt new ship among the ghostly hulks of the thousands of vessels that lie on the floor of the sea only this ship, the Lusitania, was not white but red with blood. Joining the legion of the lost, the Lusitania declares: My wrong cries out for vengeance. The blow that sent me here Was aimed In helL My dying scream Has reached Jehovah's ear. Not all the seven oceans Shall wash away that stain: Upon a brow that wears a crown I am the brand of Cain. Soon after America entered the war, Kilmer, although married and the father of three children, enlisted in a famous New York regiment the "Fighting Sixty-ninth." Sixty-ninth." He became a sergean'; and although he had opportunitier. for promotion, he turned them down because they would have involved in-volved leaving his regiment for training elsewhere. "I'd rather be a sergeant in the Sixty-ninth than a lieutenant in any other regiment in the world," he wrote a friend. And it was as a sergeant in the Sixty-ninth that he died on July 30, 1918, during the five-days' fighting for the heights near the Ourcq river. He had volunteered his services to the major of the battalion leading the advance because be-cause his own battalion was not in the lead. Having discovered a German machine gun nest in the woods ahead, he was sent with a patrol to determine its exact ex-act location. Two hours later, when the rest of the battalion advanced ad-vanced into the woods, they found Kilmer lying, bent over a ridge, as if still scouting. When they turned him over they found that he was dead. He was buried near the spot where he fell beside his lieutenant who was also killed. |