Hackley School - Annual Yearbook (Tarrytown, NY)

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E THE 1929 ANNUAL cellaneous reading and by the zest with which he entered the round of so- cial life at college. After graduating from Harvard in 1910, he spent a restless year or two in New York and decided that the life he craved could not be found in America but awaited him in Europe. Accordingly he set out for Paris the following year, which truly marked a turning point in his history. At Paris he lived in the spirit of the Eighteenth Century romanticist, taking up his lodging among the artists and students of the Latin Quarter. Paris has had many lovers but few more devoted than Alan Seeger. It was here in the French Capitol, surrounded by so much beauty on all sides that he produced the bulk of his work. In the early summer of the fateful year, 1914, his Juvenilia having grown into a passable size, he went to London to meet his father and with a view of having his poems published. Alan said good-bye to his father on July 25, two days after the Austrian Ultimatum had been sent to Serbia, and the very day that the Serbian reply had been rejected and the Austrian Minister recalled from Belgrade. The wheels of fate were al- ready whirling. Seeing a European war inevitable, Alan returned to Paris leaving his poems in the care of a printer at Bruges enroute. War had not been declared three weeks when, together with forty or fifty of his fellow-countrymen, he enlisted in the French Foreign Legion. He him- self gave adequate reasons for the action in a letter of the following May: 'Why did you enlist?' In every case the answer was the same. That memorable day in August came. Suddenly the old haunts were deso- late, the boon companions had gone. It was unthinkable to leave the danger to them and accept only the pleasures oneself, to go on enjoying the sweet things in life in defense of which they were perhaps even shed- ding their blood in the north. Some day they would return, and with honor-not all, but some. The old order of things would have irrevocably vanished. There would be a new companionship whose bond would be the common danger run, the common suffering borne, the common glory shared. All during that year and the next Alan lived the horror and the strug- gles of a soldier in the trenches. He was in the thick of the fighting the whole time, with the dead, the dying and the wounded all about him. On the lst of July the great advance began. At six in the evening of July 4th, the Legion was ordered to clear the enemy out of the village of Belloy- en-Santerre. Alan Seeger advanced in the first rush, and his squad was enfiliated by the fire of six German machine guns, concealed in a hollow way. Most of them went down, and Alan among them-wounded in sev- eral places. But the following waves of attack were more fortunate. As his comrades came up to him, Alan cheered them ong and as they left him Page eight

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THE 1929 ANNUAL Qian issuer mHERE is no more fitting person to whom this volume could possibly be dedicated than to Alan Seeger, of the Class of 1906. Held high in the affection and esteem of all who knew him, it is he whose praises the French school children sing, whose statue stands on top and whose poems are carved into the sides of the Monument Eleve au Volontaires Ameri- cains Tombes au Champ D'Honneur, in the Place des Etats-Unis, in Par- is, to whom the State of Pennsylvania has dedicated a State Forest Pre- serve, and who has been highly honored by all the Allied Powers. His was a very rare spirit, his was 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 is given to most men, even of high vitality, to extract from a life of twice the length. 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 iire, and he fell, with most of his comrades, on the blood-stained but reconquered soil. To his friends the loss was grievous, to literature it was-we shall never know how great, but assuredly not small. If ever there was a being who said 'Yea' to life, accepted it as a glor- ious gift, and was determined to live it with all his might, it was Alan Seeger. There follows a brief summary of his life, based on the intro- duction to his Peoms, by William Archer. Alan Seeger was born in New York City on June 22, 1888, of old New England parentage. His early youth was spent at the Seeger homestead on Staten Island, just across the bay from New York. In 1898 the family moved back to New York and Alan took up his education at the Horace Mann School. But two years later the Seegers removed to Mexico, where some of the most impressionable years of his youth were spent. Here he and his brother and sister lived and played in that land of warm sunshine, bright colors and smiling faces, a country rich with the mingled tradi- tions of ancient Spain and the Empire of Montezuma. But after an at- tack of scarlet fever, the altitude of Mexico City was thought to be too great for Alan's health, and he was sent north to school. He seemed predestined to environments of beauty. When, at fourteen, he left his Mexican home it was to go to the Hackley School, at Tarrytown, N. Y., an institution placed on a high hill overlooking that noblest of rivers, the Hudson, and surrounded by a domain of its own, extending to many acres of meadow and woodland. After three years at Hackley, Alan entered Harvard College in 1906. Here, as an editor of The Harvard Monthly, he distinguished himself by his poetic contributions, by his wide and mis- Page seven

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mm THE 1929 ANNUAL behind, they heard him singing a marching song in English. They took the villageg they drove the enemy out. NeXt morning Alan Seeger lay dead. He wrote his own best epitaph in his 4'Ode In Memory of the Am- erican Volunteers Fallen for Francef' And on those furthest rims of hallowed ground Where the forlorn, the gallant charge expires, When the slain bugler has long ceased to sound, And on the tangled wires The last wild rally staggers, crumbles, stops, Withered beneath the shrapnel's iron showers :- Now heaven be thanked, we gave a few brave drops, Now heaven be thanked, a few brave drops were ours. I HAVE A RENDEZVOUS WITH DEATH 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. It may be he shall take my hand And lead me into his dark land And close my eyes and quench my breath. It may be I shall pass him still. 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 . . . 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. -Alain Seeger. Page nine