Giant Hours with Poet Preachers Part 5

Miller had a profound, deep, sincere love for Christ, and more than any poet I know did he express with deep insight and with deeper sweetness the great moments in Christ's life. He made these great moments human.

He brings them near to us, so that we see them more clearly. He makes them warm our hearts, and we feel that Christ's words are truly our words in this, our own day. In that great scene where Christ blessed little children, who has ever made it sweeter and nearer and warmer with human touch?

"Then reaching his hands, he said, lowly, 'Of such is my Kingdom,' and then Took the little brown babes in the holy White hands of the Saviour of Men;

"Held them close to his heart and caressed them, Put his face down to theirs as in prayer, Put their hands to his neck and so blessed them With baby-hands hid in his hair."

The scene with the woman taken in adultery he has also made human and near in these lines, called "Charity":

"Who now shall accuse and arraign us?

What man shall condemn and disown?

Since Christ has said only the stainless Shall cast at his fellows a stone?"

That Jesus Christ died for the world, that Calvary had more meaning for humanity than anything else that has ever happened, Miller put in four lines:

"Look starward! stand far, and unearthy, Free souled as a banner unfurled.

Be worthy! O, brother, be worthy!

For a G.o.d was the price of the world!"

He caught Christ's teaching, and the whole gist of the New Testament expressed in that immortal phrase "Judge not," and he wrote some lines that have been on the lips of man the world over, and shall continue to be as long as men speak poetry. A unique pleasure was mine on this afternoon. I had noticed something that Mrs. Miller had not noticed in this great poem. She quoted it to us:

"In men whom men condemn as ill I find so much of goodness still; In men whom men p.r.o.nounce Divine I find so much of sin and blot, I hesitate to draw the line Between the two, where G.o.d has not!"

Miller wrote it that way when he first wrote it, in his younger days.

It was natural for Mrs. Miller to quote it that way. But I had discovered in his revised and complete poems that he had changed a significant phrase in that great verse. He had said, "I do not dare,"

in the fifth line, instead of "I hesitate." His mature years had made him say, "I do not dare to draw the line!"

G.o.d AND HEAVEN

He knew that heaven and G.o.d were near to humanity and earth. He was not afraid of death. He teaches us all Christian courage in this line of thought. He knew that his "Greek Heights" were very near to heaven because he knew that anywhere is near to heaven to the believer:

"Be this my home till some fair star Stoops earthward and shall beckon me; For surely G.o.d-land lies not far From these Greek Heights and this great sea!"

He yearned to teach men to believe in this G.o.d and his nearness; this G.o.d in whom he believed with all his heart. This cry out of his soul, written just a few days before his death, is like Tennyson's "Crossing The Bar" in that it was his swan song:

"Could I but teach man to believe, Could I but make small men to grow, To break frail spider webs that weave About their thews and bind them low.

Could I but sing one song and lay Grim Doubt; I then could go my way In tranquil silence, glad, serene, And satisfied from off the scene.

But Ah! this disbelief, this doubt, This doubt of G.o.d, this doubt of G.o.d The d.a.m.ned spot will not out!

Wouldst learn to know one little flower, Its perfume, perfect form, or hue?

Yea, wouldst thou have one perfect hour Of all the years that come to you?

Then grow as G.o.d hath planted, grow A lovely oak, or daisy low, As he hath set his garden; be Just what thou art, or gra.s.s or tree.

Thy treasures up in heaven laid Await thy sure ascending soul: Life after life--be not afraid I"

Yes, Miller believed in home, in Christ, and G.o.d and immortality. He believed that heaven and G.o.d were near to man, and in his last days there was no doubt. Thus his own writings confirm what Mrs. Miller, on that memorable afternoon, made certain by her warm, tear-wet, personal testimony. And as she quoted these last lines, and the sun had set behind the Golden Gate, which we could even then see from the room in which we sat, we felt as though Miller himself were near, listening as she read, listening with us. And these are the last verses that she quoted, which seem fit verses with which to close this chapter study of Joaquin Miller:

"I will my ashes to my steeps, I will my steeps, green cross, red rose, To those who love the beautiful, Come, learn to be of those."

And is it any wonder that, as we sat in the twilight listening to that invitation to his home, these words made the red roses and the green cross of Christ against the hill our very own? And is it any wonder that, as she quoted these last verses we felt him near to us?

"Enough to know that I and you Shall breathe together there as here Some clearer, sweeter atmosphere, Shall walk, high, wider ways above Our petty selves, shall learn to lead Man up and up in thought and deed.

and,

"Come here when I am far away, Fond lovers of this lovely land, And sit quite still and do not say, 'Turn right or left and lend a hand,'

But sit beneath my kindly trees And gaze far out yon sea of seas.

These trees, these very stones could tell How much I loved them and how well, And maybe I shall come and sit Beside you; sit so silently You will not reck of it."

[Ill.u.s.tration: ALAN SEEGER]

IV

ALAN SEEGER [Footnote: The poetical selections appearing in this chapter are used by permission, and are taken from poems by Alan Seeger. Published by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. ]

POET OF YOUTH, BEAUTY, FAME, JOY, LOVE, DEATH, AND G.o.d

Rupert Brooke and Alan Seeger--so shall their names be linked together forever by those who love poetry. In the first place, they were much alike: buoyant, young; loving life, living life; and both dying for the great cause of humanity in the world's greatest war. Brooke the Englishman; Seeger the American; so are they linked. Both were but lads in their twenties; both vivid as lightning and as warm as summer sunshine in their personalities; both truly great poets, who had, even in the short time they lived, run a wide gamut of poetic expression.

I am not saying that either Brooke or Seeger may be called a Christian poet; nor am I saying that they may not be called that. This war in which they have given their lives will make a vast difference in the definition of what a Christian is. I can detect no orthodox Christian message in either of their dreamings, but I do find in both poets a clean, high moral message, and therefore give them place in this pulpit of the poets.

The wide range of this young American's writing astonishes the reader.

He died very young: while the morning sun was just lifting its head above the eastern horizon of life; while the heavens were still crimson, and gold, and rose, and fire. What he might have written in the steady white heat of noontime and in life's glorious afternoon of experience, and in its subtle charm of "sunset and the evening star,"

one can only guess. But while he lived he lived; and, living, wrote. He dipped his pen in that same gold and fire of the only part of life he knew, its daybreak, and wrote. No wonder his writing was warm; no wonder he wrote of Youth, Beauty, Fame, Joy, Love, Death, and G.o.d.

THE SONG OF YOUTH

Nor Byron, nor Sh.e.l.ley, nor Keats, nor Swinburne, nor Brooke, nor any other poet ever sounded the heights and depths and glory of Youth as did Seeger. He sang it as he breathed it and lived it, and just as naturally. His singing of it was as rhythmic as breathing, and as sweet as the first song of an oriole in springtime. In his fifth sonnet, a form in which he loved to write and of which he was a master, he sings youth in terms "almost divine":

"Phantoms of bliss that beckon and recede--, Thy strange allurements, City that I love, Maze of romance, where I have followed too The dream Youth treasures of its dearest need And stars beyond thy towers bring tidings of."

Poems by Alan Seeger.

He loved New York; he loved Paris; he loved any city because youth and life and romance and love were there. He drank all of these into his soul like a thirsty desert drinks rain; to spring to flowers and life and color again. He drank of life and youth as a flower drinks of dew, or a bird at a city fountain, with fluttering joy, drinks, singing as it drinks. You feel all of that eagerness in "Sonnet VI" where he says:

"Where I drank deep the bliss of being young, The strife and sweet potential flux of things I sought Youth's dream of happiness among!"

Poems by Alan Seeger.

THE SONG OF BEAUTY

And closely akin to Youth always is Beauty. Beauty and Youth walk arm in arm everywhere, and one may even go so far as to say anywhere. Youth cares not where he goes as long as Beauty walks beside him. He will walk to the ends of the earth. Indeed, he prefers the long way home.

Anybody who has known both Youth and Beauty knows this, and it need not be argued about much, thank G.o.d. And so it is most natural to find this young poet singing the lyric of Beauty even as he sings the lyric of Youth. How understandingly he addresses Beauty, and how reverently in "An Ode to Natural Beauty"!