John Adams High School - Clipper Yearbook (Ozone Park, NY)

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SPIRIT VOICES BY WALTER STOREY 'x g , ll .V L. lsigft he blare of the bugle and the roll of the drums that echoed and reechoed across the earth's surface two decades ago has faded. The clamor and cry of the people caught in the turmoil of the war has receded, and the post-war excitement has calmed. But still the rumble of the guns and the horror and the grimness of the war have been carried over the years to us. They have been carried over by men who knew the war and died in it. They were the poets of the war. The outstanding three and the three destined to live the longest are Rupert Brooke, Alan Seeger, and Joyce Kilmer. They were poets, all of them, but contrary to the conception of poets, they knew how to fight-fight hard and grimly. While they were close to the sterner side of life, they had in them that spark of beauty and appreciation of beauty which distinguished them from other men. They, with their pens, created something of the war which has out-lasted and outlived the roar and din of the actual battle. The first one of this trio to pass on was Rupert Brooke, who was born at'Rugby, England, on August 3, 1887. He was educated at the school there, where his father was a master. From Rugby he went to King's College in Cambridge, where he won a Fellowship. The following year the Great War broke out, and in September, he enlisted as a sub-lieutenant in His Majesty's Navy. On the last day of February 1915, he sailed with the British Mediterranean Ex- peditionary Force, and he was never to come back. On April 23, at the age of 28, he died of blood poisoning. He was the first of the war poets to be killed. He was intensely patriotic and his devoti-on to his mother country, England, is best expressed in the stirring lines from his poem, The Soldier. 2641's-as :L.lnfn'n.-nQ

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If I should die, think only this of meg That there's some corner ofa foreign field That is forever England. Alan Seeger, who wrote the famous poem, I Have a Rendezvous With Death, was born in New York City on June 22, 1888. When he was ten, his family moved to Mexico, where he spent the happiest days of his life. Seeger had always been a great book lover, and never contented unless he was reading some sort of book. However, when half of his college course at Harvard was completed, his soul changed from one of contentment to one of restlessness. It was this underlying cause that brought him to Paris in the Spring of 1914 and later to his death. Three weeks after war was declared between France and Ger- many, Alan joined the French Foreign Legion. Eight months later his regiment was sent to the front where it fought in most of the important battles. On July 1, 1916, an advance began, and on the American Inde- pendence day, the Legion was ordered to clear the village of Belloy- en-Sauterre, of the Germans. The soldiers charged down on the enemy and were met by a hail of bullets from six hidden machine guns. Most of the men fell. Among them was Seeger, mortally wounded. The French captured the town and marched on. When dawn came the next day, Alan Seeger had kept his word. And I to my pledged word am true, I shall not fail that rendezvous. Joyce Kilmer will be perhaps most remembered through his poem, Trees which brought him world renown. He was born in New Brunswick, N. J., on December 6, 1886 and was christened Alfred Joyce Kilmer. When Joyce became older he dropped the Alfred. Joyce attended preparatory school and after graduating became a student in Rutgers College, where he received his diploma in 1904. Two years later he was awarded an A. B. at Columbia. He once worked on the New York Times Book Review. It was while serving in the latter capacity that the bugles of America announced her entrance into the European conflict. Almost im- mediately Kilmer joined the Seventh New York National Guard. 287-1--IE ::n.nn'n'o.-n-4