Giant Hours With Poet Preachers

selections appearing i

taken from poems by A

bner's Sons,

UTY, FAME, JOY, LO

ife; and both dying for the great cause of humanity in the world's greatest war. Brooke the Englishman; Seeger the American; so are they linked. Both were but lads in their twenties;

h they have given their lives will make a vast difference in the definition of what a Christian is. I can detect no orthodox Christian message

se, and fire. What he might have written in the steady white heat of noontime and in life's glorious afternoon of experience, and in its subtle charm of "sunset and the evening star," one can only guess. But while he lived he li

ONG O

. He sang it as he breathed it and lived it, and just as naturally. His singing of it was as rhythmic as breathing, and as sweet as the first song of

liss that beck

lurements, Cit

e, where I hav

treasures of i

d thy towers br

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soul like a thirsty desert drinks rain; to spring to flowers and life and color again. He drank of life and youth as a flower drinks of dew,

deep the bliss

sweet potential

's dream of ha

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NG OF

him. He will walk to the ends of the earth. Indeed, he prefers the long way home. Anybody who has known both Youth and Beauty knows this, and it need not be argued about much, thank God. And so i

auty, whose s

rose of dawn

sh the exalte

of sensibl

orld, essentia

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n hearts), Seeger writes of Beauty. But we who know him cannot be made to think that this "Wanderer" is a fellow we do not know; "nor Launcelot, nor another."

love of Beaut

pure a casket

ch a lesser t

ge enough for

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ONG O

that calls more insistently than Fame. Youth and Beauty and Fame-how closely akin they are! If Beauty and Fame keep him company, Youth is next the

lowed Fame with

real ambitio

foam of Nature

f palpable

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l spheres set down in human words, let us catch again the poetic echo of that third lin

till the crow

of the kings are

till the hil

ngs of the s

gs, this echo is the echo

s the question which he himself ask

the en

re to coin t

memory: to hav

moon, when it s

boughs where mat

le tree

t dear need tha

rdened nor the

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singings of this singing poet, and he himself has g

draine

bowl and cried

mistress whom

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Fame to Joy and hear him sing o

ONG O

head. He loved to swim and he loved to dive. Perhaps into his living and his writing he carried this athletic

om

n existence

ficient and my

ng opportun

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s man, who so loved to live, who gloated on existence, who saw life as a trembling opportunity for

mportuning fro

market where Jo

rse yet swells w

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s told us this. We expect it of older poets, but here a young poet sees it all clearly; that Youth must buy Joy while his purse is full with Youth. And ye who rob Youth of playtime, of Joy, ye capitalists, ye money makers and life destroye

ONG O

that are within him bubbling over, sings of Youth, and Beauty, and Fame, and Joy, yet he knows that these are not al

he knows-love of comrade, love of God. In this same "An Ode to Na

re set, but '

lled them, ye

wanted wings

yet to think

oyal to the l

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omantic love; it is

ings in "The Need to Love" as great a so

love that all

art and banis

gardens where

ers that one t

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and dedicates it to Love and lights a fire of wor

love is the de

the volume wit

es without prayer

set and the

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palace is cold and barren; the

ONG O

rhaps the war made these two imaginative poets think of Death sooner than Youth usually gives him heed. But most men will think of Death when they are face to face with the shadow day and nig

e fear, then,

t perish,

inevit

redestin

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ame poem, "Makatooh

t bowed nor bla

, but ser

ld wish mo

you mos

s though y

through the

ately ban

eroes b

all all de

come as sl

claim you

ou from th

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giving their lives heroically in God's great cause of liberty in his world-t

tes also most strongly his attitude toward Death, is that poem

rendezvous

isputed b

mes back with

blossoms f

endezvous

ings back blue

*

'twere bette

silk and s

robs out in b

pulse, and bre

awakenings

rendezvou

in some fl

rips north ag

pledged wo

fail that

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ONG O

ay to climb to God. We would not expect this young poet to be thinking much in this direction, but he does just the same. I have even found

the same: some

pervasive

visible Natu

nd near and a

inger but with

d, fled down th

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ound of Heaven." And again in the presence of War's death the poet fel

ast assault ou

ain and peril

hearts aflame a

brave etern

us in which we

whose presence

er who would

ultless and ou

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eeps that truly great poem, "The Hosts," to a swinging climax in its last tremendous stanza; whi

f soldiers as "Big with the beauty of cos

s bare and fl

he summits o

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th

a stately

at peopled the

stars in t

t gorgeous an

had sense t

rama must be

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ISH

OXE

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MAS

RT S

RT B

tion: JOH