Introduction and Conclusion of a Long Poem
Ode in Memory of the American Volunteers Fallen for France






Introduction by William Archer



This book contains the undesigned, but all the more spontaneous and authentic,
biography of a very rare spirit. It contains 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 it 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 fire, 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. Yet this was a case, if ever there was one,
in which we may not only say "Nothing is here for tears,"
but may add to the well-worn phrase its less familiar sequel:

Nothing to wail
Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt,
Dispraise, or blame, -- nothing but well and fair,