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Poems-Part4_Alan Seeger(1888-1916)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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and the lesser report of its explosion.

==



And every now and then comes the bursting of a shell immediately overhead,

and the rattle of its fragments on the roof of the bomb-proof dug-out.



Think what it must have meant to this eager, ardent, pleasure-loving spirit

to sit out, day after day, in a chill, sodden, verminous trench,



a grand orchestral concert of this music of human madness!

The solitude of sentry-duty evidently comes to him as something of a relief.



"It may," he says, "be all that is melancholy if the night is bad

and the winter wind moans through the pines"; but it also



"brings moments of exaltation, if the cloud-banks roll back,

if the moonlight breaks over the windless hills, or the heavens blaze



with the beauty of the northern stars."

==



The sentinel has ample time for reflection. Alone under the stars,

war in its cosmic rather than its moral aspect reveals itself to him. . . .



He thrills with the sense of filling an appointed, necessary place

in the conflict of hosts, and, facing the enemy's crest,



above which the Great Bear wheels upward to the zenith, he feels,

with a sublimity of enthusiasm that he has never before known,



a kind of companionship with the stars.

==



Six days in the trenches alternated with a three days' interval of rest

"either billeted in the stables and haylofts of the village or encamped



in the woods and around the chateau." Thus the winter of 1914-15 wore away,

with little to break its monotony. The heaviest fighting



was all to the northward. One gathers from his poem "The Aisne"

that at Craonne he took part in the repulse of a serious enemy attack;



but there is no mention of this in the letters before me.

On March 12, 1915, he writes to his mother in fierce indignation



over something that has appeared in an American paper as to life

in the Foreign Legion. The writer of the "disgraceful article", he says,



"like many others of his type, was long ago eliminated from our ranks,

for a person buoyed up by no noble purpose is the first to succumb



to the hardships of the winter that we have been through. . . .

If his lies did nothing worse than belittle his comrades,



who are here for motives that he is unable to conceive,

it would be only dishonourable. But when it comes to throwing discredit



on the French Government, that in all its treatment of us

has been generous beyond anything that one would think possible,



it is too shameful for any words to characterize."

With the coming of spring, there was of course some mitigation of the trials



of the winter. Here is an almost idyllic passage from a letter to his sister,

written on the fly-leaves of `Les Confessions de J. J. Rousseau',



Geneve, MDCCLXXXII:

==



We put in a very pleasant week here -- nine hours of guard at night

in our outposts up on the hillside; in the daytime sleep, or foraging



in the ruined villages, loafing in the pretty garden of the chateau,

or reading up in the library. We have cleaned this up now,



and it is an altogether curious sensation to recline here in an easy-chair,

reading some fine old book, and just taking the precaution



not to stay in front of the glassless windows through which

the sharpshooters can snipe at you from their posts in the thickets



on the slopes of the plateau, not six hundred metres away.

Sometimes our artillery opens up and then you lay down your book for a while,



and, looking through a peek-hole, watch the 75's and 120's

throw up fountains of dirt and debris all along the line



of the enemy's trenches.

==



"Spring has come here at last," so the letter closes, "and we are having

beautiful weather. I am going in swimming in the Aisne this afternoon



for the first time. In fine health and spirits."

During the summer, the Legion was moved about a good deal



from sector to sector, and Alan often found himself in pleasant places,

and got a good deal of positiveenjoyment out of his life.



On June 18, 1915, he wrote to his mother:




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