Alan Seeger, on the other hand, we can very truly envy. Keats, coughing out his soul by the Spanish Page xiiSteps Shelley's spirit of flame snuffed out by a chance capful of wind from the hills of Carrara Byron, stung by a fever-gnat on the very threshold of his great adventure- for all these we can feel nothing but poignant unrelieved regret. Without suggesting any parity of stature, one cannot but think of the group of English poets who, about a hundred years ago were cut off in the flower of their age. Of all the poets who have died young, none has died so happily. Yet this was a case, if ever there was one, in which we may not only say 'Nothing is here for tears,' but may add to the well-worn phrase its less familiar sequel:Īnd what may quiet us in a death so noble. To his friends the loss was grievous, to literature it was-we shall never know how great, but assuredly not small. Alan Seeger had barely passed his twenty-eighth birthday, when, charging up to the German trenches on the field of Belloy-en-Santerre, his 'escouade' of the Foreign Legion was caught in a deadly flurry of machine-gun fire, and he fell, with most of his comrades, on the blood-stained but reconquered soil. It contains the record of a short life, into which was crowded far more of keen experience and high aspiration-of the thrill of sense and the rapture of soul-than it is given to most men, even of high vitality, to extract from a life of twice the length. This book contains the undesigned, but all the more spontaneous and authentic, biography of a very rare spirit. Page Page INTRODUCTION Page Page xi INTRODUCTION

ODE IN MEMORY OF THE AMERICAN VOLUNTEERS FALLEN FOR FRANCE 170.INTRODUCTION AND CONCLUSION OF A LONG POEM 167.ON RETURNING TO THE FRONT AFTER LEAVE 155 AT THE TOMB OF NAPOLEON BEFORE THE ELECTIONS IN AMERICA-NOVEMBER, 1912 97.TO ENGLAND AT THE OUTBREAK OF THE BALKAN WAR 96.WRITTEN IN A VOLUME OF THE COMTESSE DE NOAILLES 90.WITH A COPY OF SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS ON LEAVING COLLEGE 89.

Enchanting vellum legion