Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

migrations, including a sojourn in Mexico, where Seeger spent the most impressionable years of his youth. In 1906, he entered Harvard; became one of the editors of the Harvard Monthly; returned to New York in 1910 and in 1913 set off for Paris

66

a departing point," wrote William Archer, "which may fairly be called his Hegira, the turning point of his history." 1914 came, and the European war had not entered its third week when, along with some forty of his fellow-countrymen, Seeger enlisted in the Foreign Legion of France. He was in action almost continually, serving on various fronts. On July 1, 1916, a new advance began; a few days later the Legion was ordered to clear the Germans out of the village of Belloy-enSanterre. On the fourth of July, Seeger advanced in the first rush and his squad was practically wiped out by hidden machine-gun fire. Seeger fell, mortally wounded, and died the next morning.

Seeger's literary promise was far greater than his poetic accomplishment. With the exception of his one famous poem, there is little of importance though much of charm in his collected Poems (published, with an Introduction by William Archer, in 1916). His letters from the front (published in 1917) show a more powerful touch, a keener sense of perception. Had he lived a few years more, he might have been a valuable recorder of a changed and changing world.

"I HAVE A RENDEZVOUS WITH DEATH "1

I have a rendezvous with Death

At some disputed barricade,

When Spring comes back with rustling shade.
And apple-blossoms fill the air-

I have a rendezvous with Death

When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

1 From Poems by Alan Seeger. Copyright, 1916, by Charles Scribner's Sons. By permission of the publishers.

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 scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows 'twere 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 am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

Willard Wattles

Willard (Austin) Wattles was born at Bayneville, Kansas, July 8, 1888. He received his A.B. at the University of Kansas in 1909 and, since 1910, has divided his time between teaching English and harvesting wheat.

His first book was an anthology, Sunflowers: A Book of Kansas Poems (1914), to which he also contributed. Lanterns in Gethsemane (1918) consists, almost entirely, of mystical and religious poems. There is, however, little of the sermonizing unction and less cant in these fresh pages. There is an unusual

vibrancy here; a warm buoyance that glows against its theological background. Many of Wattles's verses have the peculiar grace of a parable joined to a nursery rhyme; "The Builder," "Jericho" and a few others seem like scraps of the Scripture rendered by Mother Goose.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

Willard Wattles.

Copyright, 1918, by E. P. Dutton & Co.,

New York.

CREEDS

How pitiful are little folk

They seem so very small;

They look at stars, and think they are
Denominational.

T. S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns Eliot, one of the most brilliant of the young expatriates, was born at St. Louis, Missouri, in 1888. He received his A.B. at Harvard in 1909 and his A.M. in 1910. Subsequently, he studied at the Sorbonne and at Merton College, Oxford, becoming a teacher and lecturer in London, where he has lived since 1913.

Prufrock appeared in England in 1917. An American edition, including a number of other verses, was published under the title Poems in 1920. Eliot's early work is the more important; it is curious and sharply original. The exaltation which is the very breath of poetry is seldom present in Eliot's later lines. A certain perverse brilliance takes its place, an unearthly light without warmth which has the sparkle if not the strength of fire. It flickers mockingly through most of Eliot's sardonic pictures and shines with a bright pallor out of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "Portrait of a Lady." These two long poems are the book's main exhibit; they are sensitive and psychologically probing.

Eliot's ironic rhymed verses, which constitute the bulk of his work, are in his later style. It is this vein that tempts Eliot most-and is his own undoing. For irony, no matter how agile and erudite-and Eliot's is both-must contain heat if it is to burn. And heat is one of the few things that cannot be juggled by this acrobatic satirist. His lines, for the most part, are a species of mordant light verse; complex and disillusioned vers de société.

MORNING AT THE WINDOW

They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,
And along the trampled edges of the street
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids
Sprouting despondently at area gates.

The brown waves of fog toss up to me
Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,
And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts
An aimless smile that hovers in the air
And vanishes along the level of the roofs.

FROM "THE LOVE SONG OF

J. ALFRED PRUFROCK"

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window

panes,

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

And, seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

« ÎnapoiContinuă »