OVERTONES I heard a bird at break of day No man, I think, could listen long Yet this was but a simple bird, Alan Seeger-whose heroic death glorified his youth-was born at New York on the twenty-second of June, 1888. He studied at Harvard; then lived in Paris, and no one has ever loved Paris more than he. He enlisted in the Foreign Legion of France at the outbreak of the war in 1914, and fell on the fourth of July, 1916. His letters show his mind and heart clearly. He knew his poetry was good, and that it would not die with his body. In the last letter he wrote, we find these words: "I will write you soon if I get through all right. If not, my only earthly care is for my poems. Add the ode I sent you and the three sonnets to my last volume and you will nave opera omnia quae existant.” He wrote his autobiography in one of his last sonnets, paying poetic tribute to Philip Sidney— lover of woman, lover of battle, lover of art. Sidney, in whom the heydey of romance I give myself some credit for the way I have kept clean of what enslaves and lowers, And studied those that were esteemed in yours; То my three idols-Love and Arms and Song. His most famous poem, I Have a Rendezvous with Death, is almost intolerably painful in its tragic beauty, in its contrast between the darkness of the unchanging shadow and the apple-blossoms of the sunny air-above all, because we read it after both Youth and Death have kept their word, and met at the place appointed. He was an inspired poet. Poetry came from him as naturally as rain from clouds. His magnificent Ode in Memory of the American Volunteers Fallen in France has a nobility of phrase that matches the elevation of thought. Work like this cannot be forgotten. Alan Seeger was an Elizabethan. He had a consuming passion for beauty-his only religion. He loved women and he loved war, like the gallant, picturesque old soldiers of fortune. There was no pose in all this; his was a brave, uncalculating, forthright nature, that gave everything he had and was, without a shade of fear or a shade of regret. He is one of the most fiery spirits of our time, and like Rupert Brooke, he will be thought of as immortally young. CHAPTER XI A GROUP OF YALE POETS Henry A. Beers-the fine quality of his literary style in prose and verse-force and grace-tinished art-his humourC. M. Lewis-his war poem-E. B. Reed-Lyra Yalensis— F. E. Pierce his farm lyrics-Brian Hooker-his strong sonnets-his Turns-R. C. Rogers-The Rosary-Rupert Hughes-novelist, playwright, musician, poet-Robert Munger-his singing-R. B. Glaenzer-his fancies--Benjamin R. C. Low-his growth-William R. Benét-his vitality and optimism-Arthur Colton-his Chaucer poem-Allan Updegraff -The Time and the Place-Lee Wilson Dodd-his development—a list of other Yale Poets-Stephen V. Benét. During the twentieth century there has been flowing a fountain of verse from the faculty, young alumni, and undergraduates of Yale University; and I reserve this space at the end of my book for a consideration of the Yale group of poets, some of whom are already widely known and some of whom seem destined to be. I am not thinking of magazine verse or of fugitive pieces, but only of independent volumes of original poems. Yale has always been close to the national life of America; and the recent outburst of poetry from her sons is simply additional evidence of the renaissance all over the United States. Anyhow, the fact is worth recording. Professor Henry A. Beers was born at Buffalo on the second of July, 1847. He was admitted to the New York Bar in 1870, but in 1871 became an Instructor in English Literature at Yale, teaching continuously for forty-five years, when he retired. He has written-at too rare intervalsall his life. His book of short stories, containing A Suburban Pastoral and Split Zephyr, the lastnamed being, according to Meredith Nicholson, the best story of college life ever printed, would possibly have attracted more general attention were it not for its prevailing tone of quiet, unobtrusive pessimism, an unwelcome note in America. I am as sure of the high quality of A Suburban Pastoral as I am sure of anything; and have never found a critic who, after reading the tale, disagreed with me. In 1885 Professor Beers published a little volume of poems, The Thankless Muse; and in 1917 he collected in a thin book The Two Twilights, the best of his youthful and mature poetic production. The variety of expression is so great that no two poems are in the same mood. In Love, Death, and Life we have one of the most passionate love-poems in American literature; in The Pasture Bars the valediction has the soft, pure tone of a silver bell. Professor Beers has both vigour and grace. His fastidious taste permits him to write little, and to print only a small part of what he writes. But the force of his poetic language is so extraordinary that it has sometimes led to a complete and unfortunate misinterpretation of his work. In The Dying Pantheist to the Priest, he wrote a poem as purely dramatic, as non-personal, as the monologues of Browning; he quite successfully represented the attitude of an (imaginary) defiant, unrepentant pagan to an (imaginary) priest who wished to save him in his last moments. The speeches put into the mouth of the pantheist no more represent Mr. Beers's own sentiments than Browning's poem Confessions represented Browning's attitude toward death and religion; yet it is perhaps a tribute to the fervour of the lyric that many readers have taken it as a violent attack on Christian theology. Just as I am certain of the finished art of A Suburban Pastoral, I am equally certain of the beauty and nobility of the poetry in The Two Twilights. This volume gives its author an earned place in the front rank of living American poets. To me one of the most original and charming of the songs is the valediction to New York-and the homage to New Haven. NUNC DIMITTIS Highlands of Navesink, Deep of the sea. Tide that comes flooding up, Wall of the Palisades, I know where greener glades, |