III

JOAQUIN MILLER [Footnote: The quotations from the poems of Joaquin Miller appearing in this chapter are used by permission of the Harr Wagner Publishing Company, owners of copyright.]

A STUDY OF HOME, FATHER LOVE, GREAT MOMENTS WITH JESUS CHRIST, HEAVEN, AND GOD

It was a warm, sunny May California day; and the day stands out, even above California days. A climb up the Piedmont hills back of Oakland, California, brought us to "The Heights," the unique home of Joaquin Miller, poet of the West and poet of the world.

A visit to the homes of the New England poets is always interesting because of historic and literary associations, but none of them has the touch of the unique personality of Miller.

Most people interested in things literary know that Miller, with a great desire to emphasize the freedom of the individual, built a half dozen separate houses, one for himself, one for his wife, one for his daughter Juanita, several for guests from all over the world who were always visiting him, and a little chapel. Literary men from every nation on the planet visited Miller at "The Heights." Most people interested knew also that Miller, with his own hands, had built monuments of stone to Fremont, the explorer, to Moses, and to Browning. There was also a granite funeral pyre for himself, within sight of the little "God's Acre," in which he had buried some eighteen or twenty outcasts and derelicts of earth who had no other plot to call their own in which to take their last long sleep.

We expected to find this strange group of buildings deserted, but after inspecting the chapel, which was modeled after Newstead Abbey, and after rambling through the old-fashioned garden that Miller himself had planted—a garden with a perfect riot of colors—suddenly a little woman with a sweet face walked up to us out of the bushes and said, "Are you lovers of the poet?"

I humbly replied that we were. Then she said: "I am Mrs. Miller, and you are welcome. When you have looked around, come into Mr. Miller's own room and be refreshed. After that I will read to you from his writings."

It sounded stagey at first, but the more we knew of this sweet-faced widow of the poet the less we found about her that was not simple and sweet and natural.

After wandering around, through the fascinating paths, under the great cross of a thousand pine trees, among the roses, and flowers that he had planted with his own hands, we came at last to the little house that Mrs. Miller had called "The poet's own room," and there were we refreshed with cool lemonade and cakes. In the littleness of my soul I wondered when we were to pay for these favors, but the longer we remained the more was I shamed as I saw that this hospitality was just the natural expression of a woman, and a beautiful daughter's desire to extend the hospitality of the dead poet himself, to any who loved his writings.

There was the bed on which Miller lay for months writing many of his greatest poems, including the famous "Columbus." There was his picturesque sombrero, still hanging where he had put it last on the post of the great bed. His pen was at hand; his writing pad, his chair, his great fur coat, his handkerchief of many colors which in life he always wore about his neck; his great heavy, high-topped boots. And it was sunset.

Then Mrs. Miller began to read. As the slanting rays of as crimson a sunset as God ever painted were falling through the great cross of pine trees, Mrs. Miller's dramatic, sweet, sympathetic voice interpreted his poems for us. I sat on the bed from which Miller had, just a few months previous to that, heard the great call. The others sat in his great rockers. Mrs. Miller stood as she read. I am sure that "Columbus" will never be lifted into the sublime as it was when she read it that late May afternoon, with its famous, and thrilling phrase "Sail on! Sail on! And on! And on!"

A STUDY OF HOME

I had thought before hearing Mrs. Miller read "The Greatest Battle that Ever was Fought" that I had caught all the subtle meanings of it, but after her reading that great tribute to womanhood I knew that I had never dreamed the half of its inner meaning:

"The greatest battle that ever was fought—- Shall I tell you where and when? On the maps of the world you will find it not: It was fought by the Mothers of Men.

"Not with cannon or battle shot, With sword or nobler pen; Not with eloquent word or thought From the wonderful minds of men;

"But deep in a walled up woman's heart; A woman that would not yield; But bravely and patiently bore her part; Lo! there is that battlefield.

"No marshaling troops, no bivouac song, No banner to gleam and wave; But Oh these battles they last so long—From babyhood to the grave!

"But faithful still as a bridge of stars She fights in her walled up town; Fights on, and on, in the endless wars; Then silent, unseen goes down I

"Ho! ye with banners and battle shot, With soldiers to shout and praise, I tell you the kingliest victories fought Are fought in these silent ways."

Then, as if to give us another illustration of her great poet husband's home love, she read for us "Juanita":

"You will come, my bird, Bonita? Come, for I by steep and stone, Have built such nest, for you, Juanita, As not eagle bird hath known. . . . . . . . . . All is finished! Roads of flowers Wait your loyal little feet. All completed? Nay, the hours Till you come are incomplete!"

Who that hath the blessing of little children will not understand this waiting, yearning love of Miller for his ten-year-old girl, who was at that time in New York with her mother waiting until "The Heights" should be finished? Who does not understand how incomplete the hours were until she came?

"You will come, my dearest, truest? Come, my sovereign queen of ten: My blue sky will then be bluest; My white rose be whitest then."

GREAT MOMENTS WITH CHRIST

Miller had a profound, deep, sincere love for Christ, and more than any poet I know did he express with deep insight and with deeper sweetness the great moments in Christ's life. He made these great moments human. He brings them near to us, so that we see them more clearly. He makes them warm our hearts, and we feel that Christ's words are truly our words in this, our own day. In that great scene where Christ blessed little children, who has ever made it sweeter and nearer and warmer with human touch?

"Then reaching his hands, he said, lowly, 'Of such is my Kingdom,' and then Took the little brown babes in the holy White hands of the Saviour of Men;

"Held them close to his heart and caressed them, Put his face down to theirs as in prayer, Put their hands to his neck and so blessed them With baby-hands hid in his hair."

The scene with the woman taken in adultery he has also made human and near in these lines, called "Charity":

"Who now shall accuse and arraign us? What man shall condemn and disown? Since Christ has said only the stainless Shall cast at his fellows a stone?"

That Jesus Christ died for the world, that Calvary had more meaning for humanity than anything else that has ever happened, Miller put in four lines:

"Look starward! stand far, and unearthy, Free souled as a banner unfurled. Be worthy! O, brother, be worthy! For a God was the price of the world!"

He caught Christ's teaching, and the whole gist of the New Testament expressed in that immortal phrase "Judge not," and he wrote some lines that have been on the lips of man the world over, and shall continue to be as long as men speak poetry. A unique pleasure was mine on this afternoon. I had noticed something that Mrs. Miller had not noticed in this great poem. She quoted it to us:

"In men whom men condemn as ill I find so much of goodness still; In men whom men pronounce Divine I find so much of sin and blot, I hesitate to draw the line Between the two, where God has not!"

Miller wrote it that way when he first wrote it, in his younger days. It was natural for Mrs. Miller to quote it that way. But I had discovered in his revised and complete poems that he had changed a significant phrase in that great verse. He had said, "I do not dare," in the fifth line, instead of "I hesitate." His mature years had made him say, "I do not dare to draw the line!"

GOD AND HEAVEN

He knew that heaven and God were near to humanity and earth. He was not afraid of death. He teaches us all Christian courage in this line of thought. He knew that his "Greek Heights" were very near to heaven because he knew that anywhere is near to heaven to the believer:

"Be this my home till some fair star Stoops earthward and shall beckon me; For surely God-land lies not far From these Greek Heights and this great sea!"

He yearned to teach men to believe in this God and his nearness; this God in whom he believed with all his heart. This cry out of his soul, written just a few days before his death, is like Tennyson's "Crossing The Bar" in that it was his swan song:

"Could I but teach man to believe, Could I but make small men to grow, To break frail spider webs that weave About their thews and bind them low. Could I but sing one song and lay Grim Doubt; I then could go my way In tranquil silence, glad, serene, And satisfied from off the scene. But Ah! this disbelief, this doubt, This doubt of God, this doubt of God The damned spot will not out! Wouldst learn to know one little flower, Its perfume, perfect form, or hue? Yea, wouldst thou have one perfect hour Of all the years that come to you? Then grow as God hath planted, grow A lovely oak, or daisy low, As he hath set his garden; be Just what thou art, or grass or tree. Thy treasures up in heaven laid Await thy sure ascending soul: Life after life—be not afraid I"

Yes, Miller believed in home, in Christ, and God and immortality. He believed that heaven and God were near to man, and in his last days there was no doubt. Thus his own writings confirm what Mrs. Miller, on that memorable afternoon, made certain by her warm, tear-wet, personal testimony. And as she quoted these last lines, and the sun had set behind the Golden Gate, which we could even then see from the room in which we sat, we felt as though Miller himself were near, listening as she read, listening with us. And these are the last verses that she quoted, which seem fit verses with which to close this chapter study of Joaquin Miller:

"I will my ashes to my steeps, I will my steeps, green cross, red rose, To those who love the beautiful, Come, learn to be of those."

And is it any wonder that, as we sat in the twilight listening to that invitation to his home, these words made the red roses and the green cross of Christ against the hill our very own? And is it any wonder that, as she quoted these last verses we felt him near to us?

"Enough to know that I and you Shall breathe together there as here Some clearer, sweeter atmosphere, Shall walk, high, wider ways above Our petty selves, shall learn to lead Man up and up in thought and deed.

and,

"Come here when I am far away, Fond lovers of this lovely land, And sit quite still and do not say, 'Turn right or left and lend a hand,' But sit beneath my kindly trees And gaze far out yon sea of seas. These trees, these very stones could tell How much I loved them and how well, And maybe I shall come and sit Beside you; sit so silently You will not reck of it."

[Illustration: ALAN SEEGER]

IV

ALAN SEEGER [Footnote: The poetical selections appearing in this chapter are used by permission, and are taken from poems by Alan Seeger. Published by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. ]

POET OF YOUTH, BEAUTY, FAME, JOY, LOVE, DEATH, AND GOD

Rupert Brooke and Alan Seeger—so shall their names be linked together forever by those who love poetry. In the first place, they were much alike: buoyant, young; loving life, living life; 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; both vivid as lightning and as warm as summer sunshine in their personalities; both truly great poets, who had, even in the short time they lived, run a wide gamut of poetic expression.

I am not saying that either Brooke or Seeger may be called a Christian poet; nor am I saying that they may not be called that. This war in which 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 in either of their dreamings, but I do find in both poets a clean, high moral message, and therefore give them place in this pulpit of the poets.

The wide range of this young American's writing astonishes the reader. He died very young: while the morning sun was just lifting its head above the eastern horizon of life; while the heavens were still crimson, and gold, and rose, 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 lived; and, living, wrote. He dipped his pen in that same gold and fire of the only part of life he knew, its daybreak, and wrote. No wonder his writing was warm; no wonder he wrote of Youth, Beauty, Fame, Joy, Love, Death, and God.

THE SONG OF YOUTH

Nor Byron, nor Shelley, nor Keats, nor Swinburne, nor Brooke, nor any other poet ever sounded the heights and depths and glory of Youth as did Seeger. 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 an oriole in springtime. In his fifth sonnet, a form in which he loved to write and of which he was a master, he sings youth in terms "almost divine":

"Phantoms of bliss that beckon and recede—, Thy strange allurements, City that I love, Maze of romance, where I have followed too The dream Youth treasures of its dearest need And stars beyond thy towers bring tidings of."

Poems by Alan Seeger.

He loved New York; he loved Paris; he loved any city because youth and life and romance and love were there. He drank all of these into his 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, or a bird at a city fountain, with fluttering joy, drinks, singing as it drinks. You feel all of that eagerness in "Sonnet VI" where he says:

"Where I drank deep the bliss of being young, The strife and sweet potential flux of things I sought Youth's dream of happiness among!"

Poems by Alan Seeger.

THE SONG OF BEAUTY

And closely akin to Youth always is Beauty. Beauty and Youth walk arm in arm everywhere, and one may even go so far as to say anywhere. Youth cares not where he goes as long as Beauty walks beside 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 it is most natural to find this young poet singing the lyric of Beauty even as he sings the lyric of Youth. How understandingly he addresses Beauty, and how reverently in "An Ode to Natural Beauty"!

"Spirit of Beauty, whose sweet impulses, Flung like the rose of dawn across the sea, Alone can flush the exalted consciousness With shafts of sensible divinity, Light of the World, essential loveliness."

Poems by Alan Seeger.

Then, talking about the "Wanderer" as though that character were some far off person no kin to the poet (a way that poets have to hide the pulsing of their own 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." It is he, the poet of whom we write. It bears his imprint. It bears his trade mark. It is stamped "with the image of the king." He cannot hide from us in this:

"His heart the love of Beauty held as hides One gem most pure a casket of pure gold. It was too rich a lesser thing to hold; It was not large enough for aught besides."

Poems by Alan Seeger.

THE SONG OF FAME

Fame always lures Youth. Perhaps later experience proves that it is indeed a hollow thing, hardly worth striving for. But to Youth there is no goal 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 stars with delight. And so it is natural that this young poet shall sing the song of Fame with exuberant enthusiasm. He says in "The Need to Love":

"And I have followed Fame with less devotion, And kept no real ambition but to see Rise from the foam of Nature's sunlit ocean My dream of palpable divinity."

Poems by Alan Seeger.

And while we are listening to the music of these human stars, the music of the celestial spheres set down in human words, let us catch again the poetic echo of that third line and let it linger long as we listen, "Rise from the foam of Nature's sunlit ocean," and

"Forget it not till the crowns are crumbled, Till the swords of the kings are rent with rust; Forget it not till the hills lie humbled, And the Springs of the seas run dust,"

that, as Edwin Markham sings, this echo is the echo of the eternal poetic music.

With these wondrous lines he answers the question which he himself asks in "Fragments," "What is Success?"

"Out of the endless ore Of deep desire to coin the utmost gold Of passionate memory: to have lived so well That the fifth moon, when it swims up once more Through orchard boughs where mating orioles build And apple trees unfold, Find not of that dear need that all things tell The heart unburdened nor the arms unfilled."

Poems by Alan Seeger.

Joy comes next in our treatment of the outstanding singings of this singing poet, and he himself has given us the connecting link in the following lines:

"He has drained as well Joy's perfumed bowl and cried as I have cried: Be Fame their mistress whom Love passes by."

Poems by Alan Seeger.

And thus smoothly we pass from Fame to Joy and hear him sing of this fourth high peak of Youth.

THE SONG OF JOY

Whatever he did, whatever he sang, whatever he lived, this man swept all things else aside and plunged in over head. He loved to swim and he loved to dive. Perhaps into his living and his writing he carried this athletic joy also, and as he lived he lived to the full. It seems so as one reads in "I Loved" these impassioned lines:

"From a boy I gloated on existence. Earth to me Seemed all sufficient and my sojourn there One trembling opportunity for joy."

Poems by Alan Seeger.

And then one pauses to weep awhile, and the lines grow dim as he reads them again to know that this man, who so loved to live, who gloated on existence, who saw life as a trembling opportunity for Joy, must leave it so soon. And yet he left it nobly. Again in "An Ode to Antares" he sings of Joy:

"What clamor importuning from every booth! At Earth's great market where Joy is trafficked in Buy while thy purse yet swells with golden Youth!"

Poems by Alan Seeger.

Kindly Age, Age who had not lost his love, always sings like that to Youth; always tells Youth to live while he may, play while the playworld is his. Every poet who has older grown, from Shakespeare to Lowell, and yet retained his love, has 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 destroyers, listen to this dead poet who yet lives in these words. Fathers, mothers, let childhood spend its all for Joy while the purse of Youth is full. It will be empty after while and it shall never be filled again with Youth. So says the Poet.

THE SONG OF LOVE

The discriminating reader of Seeger soon sees, however, that, while he sings as needs he must, because of the springs that are within him bubbling over, sings of Youth, and Beauty, and Fame, and Joy, yet he knows that these are not all of life. He knows that there are higher things than these. These higher things are Love, Death, God—what a trilogy!

Love is all. He is sure of this. He is true to this. Romantic love he knows—love of comrade, love of God. In this same "An Ode to Natural Beauty" his final conclusion is that Love is best after all:

"On any venture set, but 'twas the first For Beauty willed them, yea whatever be The faults I wanted wings to rise above; I am cheered yet to think how steadfastly I have been loyal to the love of Love!"

Poems by Alan Seeger.

This is more than romantic love; it is the "love of Love."

And lest this be not strong enough, he sings in "The Need to Love" as great a song as man ever heard on this great theme:

"The need to love that all the stars obey Entered my heart and banished all beside. Bare were the gardens where I used to stray; Faded the flowers that one time satisfied."

Poems by Alan Seeger.

Then, not content, he sets up an altar of poetry and dedicates it to Love and lights a fire of worship there, and leaves it not, nor night nor day:

"All that's not love is the dearth of my days, The leaves of the volume with rubric unwrit, The temple in times without prayer, without praise, The altar unset and the candle unlit."

Poems by Alan Seeger.

If Love be not queen to him, the palace is cold and barren; the "altar unset and the candle unlit"

THE SONG OF DEATH

Like Brooke, a victim of the Hun, so Seeger, also a victim of the barbarian, seemed to feel the constant presence of Death, an unseen guest at the Feast of Youth and Joy and Fame and Love. Perhaps 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 night as were these soldier-crusading poets; when they see him stalking in every trench, in every wood, on every hill and road, and in every field and village. But how bravely he spoke of Death!—

"Learn to drive fear, then, from your heart. If you must perish, know, O man, 'Tis an inevitable part Of the predestined plan."

Poems by Alan Seeger.

And again in this same poem, "Makatooh," he sings of Death:

"Guard that, not bowed nor blanched with fear You enter, but serene, erect, As you would wish most to appear To those you most respect.

"So die, as though your funeral Ushered you through the doors that led Into a stately banquet hall Where heroes banqueted;

"And it shall all depend therein Whether you come as slave or lord, If they acclaim you as their kin Or spurn you from their board."

Poems by Alan Seeger.

What a challenge this is to all who must die in this war, to all lads who are giving their lives heroically in God's great cause of liberty in his world—this challenge to die so that you may be welcomed into the fraternity of heroes!

Without doubt Seeger's best-known poem, and one which illustrates also most strongly his attitude toward Death, is that poem entitled "I Have a Rendezvous With Death," from which we quote:

"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.

* * * * *

"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."

Poems by Alan Seeger.

THE SONG OF GOD

From the lighter thoughts of Youth, Joy, Fame, Beauty, through the "long, long thoughts of Youth"; through Love and Death it is not a long way 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 those who say that he was not a God-man, but these poems refute that slander on a dead man and poet. I find him singing in "The Nympholept":

"I think it was the same: some piercing sense Of Deity's pervasive immanence, The life that visible Nature doth indwell Grown great and near and all but palpable He might not linger but with winged strides Like one pursued, fled down the mountainsides."

Poems by Alan Seeger.

This reminds one instantly of the haunting Christ of Thompson's "The Hound of Heaven." And again in the presence of War's death the poet felt that other and greater presence without doubt, as these words prove:

"When to the last assault our bugles blow: Reckless of pain and peril we shall go, Heads high and hearts aflame and bayonets bare, And we shall brave eternity as though Eyes looked on us in which we would see fair— One waited in whose presence we would wear, Even as a lover who would be well-seen, Our manhood faultless and our honor clean."

Poems by Alan Seeger.

And with magnificent acknowledgment of the divine plan of it all, of life and war and all, he sweeps that truly great poem, "The Hosts," to a swinging climax in its last tremendous stanza; which, fitting too, shall be the closing lines of this chapter on our dead American, martyred poet.

He first speaks of the marching columns of soldiers as "Big with the beauty of cosmic things. Mark how their columns surge!"

"With bayonets bare and flags unfurled, They scale the summits of the world—"

Poems by Alan Seeger.

And then:

"There was a stately drama writ By the hand that peopled the earth and air And set the stars in the infinite And made night gorgeous and morning fair, And all that had sense to reason knew That bloody drama must be gone through."

Poems by Alan Seeger.