And the other living things that she spoke for to us
Have nothing more to tell her since it happened thus.
She never is around for anyone to touch,

But of ecstasy and longing she too knew much ..
And always when anyone has time to call his own,
She will come and be beside him as quiet as a stone.

Alan Seeger

Alan Seeger was born in New York, June 22, 1888. When he was still a baby, his parents moved to Staten Island, where he remained through boyhood. Later, there were several other migrations, including a sojourn in Mexico, where Seeger spent the most impressionable years of his youth. In 1906, he entered Harvard.

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 the fourth of July, 1916, ordered to take the village of Belloy-enSanterre, Seeger advanced in the first rush with his squad which 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).

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3

“I HAVE A RENDEZVOUS WITH DEATH”1

1

I have a rendezvous with Death

At some disputed barricade,

When Spring comes back with rustling shade

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

And apple-blossoms fill the air

I have a rendezvous with Death

When Spring brings back blue days and fairy pause)

It may be he shall take my hand

And lead me into his dark land

And close my eyes and quench my breath-t
It may be I shall pass him still. pan

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. (pause)

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.

Margaret Widdemer

Margaret Widdemer was born at Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and began writing in her childhood. After graduating from Drexel Institute Library School in 1909, she contributed to various magazines.

Miss Widdemer's poetic work has two distinct phases. In the one mood, she is the protesting poet, the champion of the down-trodden, the lyricist on fire with angry passion. In the other, she is the writer of well-made, polite and popular sentimental verse. Her finest poems are in Factories with Other Lyrics (1915), although several of her best songs are in The

Old Road to Paradise (1918), which divided, with Sandburg's Cornhuskers, the Columbia Poetry Prize in 1918. A new volume, Cross Currents, appeared in 1921.

Miss Widdemer is also the author of two books of short stories, four novels and several books for girls.

FACTORIES

I have shut my little sister in from life and light (For a rose, for a ribbon, for a wreath across my hair), I have made her restless feet still until the night, Locked from sweets of summer and from wild spring air;

I who ranged the meadowlands, free from sun to sun, Free to sing and pull the buds and watch the far wings fly,

I have bound my sister till her playing time was doneOh, my little sister, was it I? Was it I?

I have robbed my sister of her day of maidenhood

(For a robe, for a feather, for a trinket's restless spark), Shut from love till dusk shall fall, how shall she know good,

How shall she go scatheless through the sun-lit dark? I who could be innocent, I who could be gay,

I who could have love and mirth before the light went by,

I have put my sister in her mating-time away

Sister, my young sister, was it I? Was it I?

I have robbed my sister of the lips against her breast, (For a coin, for the weaving of my children's lace and lawn),

Feet that pace beside the loom, hands that cannot restHow can she know motherhood, whose strength is gone?

I who took no heed of her, starved and labor-worn,
I, against whose placid heart my sleepy gold-heads lie,
Round my path they cry to me, little souls unborn-
Creator! It was I! It was I!

God of Life!

THE WATCHER

She always leaned to watch for us,
Anxious if we were late,

In winter by the window,

In summer by the gate;

And though we mocked her tenderly,
Who had such foolish care,

The long way home would seem more safe
Because she waited there.

Her thoughts were all so full of us,
She never could forget!

And so I think that where she is
She must be watching yet,

Waiting till we come home to her,
Anxious if we are late-
Watching from Heaven's window,
Leaning from Heaven's gate.

Aline Kilmer

Aline (Murray) Kilmer was born in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1888. She was married to Joyce Kilmer in 1908 and, after his death during battle in France, began to deliver lectures, beginning in 1917. Since her youth, she has lived in New York.

Candles That Burn (1919) reveals a personal as well as

poetic warmth. Here is a domesticated flame, a quiet but none the less colorful hearth-fire. By its light, her world is revealed with a quaintly individualized grace. Her poems about her children are particularly well characterized. Vigils (1921) is a more ambitious and even more original offering. The nimble dexterity of "Unlearning," the banter of "Perversity" and the clean fervor of "Things" display Mrs. Kilmer as a distinct poetic personality.

EXPERIENCE

Deborah danced, when she was two,

As buttercups and daffodils do;

Spirited, frail, naïvely bold,

Her hair a ruffled crest of gold.

And whenever she spoke her voice went singing
Like water up from a fountain springing.

But now her step is quiet and slow;
She walks the way primroses go;
Her hair is yellow instead of gilt,
Her voice is losing its lovely lilt;
And in place of her wild, delightful ways
A quaint precision rules her days.

For Deborah now is three, and, oh,
She knows so much that she did not know.

THINGS

Sometimes when I am at tea with you,

I catch my breath

At a thought that is old as the world is old
And more bitter than death.