A Toast to the Bards

Pete Seeger has been there as long as I can remember, like that cousin or uncle who lived somewhere else but would show up from time to time – often rather unexpectedly but always welcome in the end even if sometimes you had to first recover from the surprise.  He seems to have even then been well-established as the paterfamilias of the folk scene that was still around as I became musically aware back in the 1960s and the bonds are still there to be seen if you look just a little bit.  I went to see Inside Llewyn Davis recently and it was a trip back in time.  I also realized that I need to clean up my MP3 player and set up a good folk music playlist.

But the bond I didn’t recognize until it hit me between the eyes as I read through the various print and online articles about our lost troubadour is that he came by it honestly and his reach goes back even beyond his own lifetime.  Almost ironically as we ponder this in 2014 – 100 years from the date of the beginning of the First World War in Europe – I learn that Pete Seeger had an uncle among the soldier poets of that war.

His name was Alan Seeger.  Born in New York City in 1880, he went to Harvard University, graduating in 1910.  Already a poet at Harvard, he moved back to New York City adopting a bohemian lifestyle there before relocating to Paris.  When war was declared in 1914, he enlisted in the French Foreign Legion – 2e Régiment étranger (the United States not entering the war until 1917).

As a soldier of France, he was killed by German machine gun fire on July 4, 1916 at Belloy-en-Santerre  during the early days of the Battle of the Somme in 1916.  I’ve known perhaps his most famous poem for years and it was apparently also a favorite of President John F. Kennedy, “I Have  a Rendezvous with Death” but never made the connection to the author of “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” before now.

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.

The Aisne (1914-1915)

We first saw fire on the tragic slopes

Where the flood-tide of France’s early gain,

Big with wrecked promise and abandoned hopes,

Broke in a surf of blood along the Aisne.

The charge the heroes left us, we assumed,

What, dying, they reconquered, we preserved,

In the chill trenches, harried, shelled, entombed,

Winter came down on us, but no man swerved.

Winter came down on us. The low clouds, torn

In the stark branches of the riven pines,

Blurred the white rockets that from dusk till morn

Traced the wide curve of the close-grappling lines.

In rain, and fog that on that withered hill

Froze before dawn, the lurking foe drew down;

Or light snows fell that made forlorner still

The ravaged country and the ruined town;

Or the long clouds would end.  Intensely fair,

The winter constellations blazing forth---

 Perseus, the Twin, Orion, the Great Bear—

Gleamed on our bayonets pointing to the north.

And the lone sentinel would start and soar

On wings of strong emotion as he knew

That kinship with the stars that only War

Is great enough to lift man’s spirits to.

And ever down the curving front, aglow

With the pale rockets’ intermittent light,

He heard, like distant thunder, grown and grow

The rumble of far battles in the night, --

Rumours, reverberant, indistinct, remote,

Borne from red fields whose martial names have won

The power to thrill like a far trumpet note,--

Vic, Vailly, Soupir, Hurtelise, Craonne…

Craonne, before thy cannon-swept plateau,

Where like sere leaves lay strewn September’s dead,

I found for all things I forfeited

A recompense I would not now forgo.

For that high fellowship was ours then

With those who, championing another’s good,

More than dull Peace or its poor votaries could,

Taught us the dignity of being men.

There we drained deeper the deep cup of life,

And on sublime summits came to learn,

After soft things, the terrible and stern,

After sweet Love, the majesty of Strife;

There we faced under those frowning heights

The blast that maims, the hurricane that kills;

There where the watch-lights on the winter hills

Flickered like balefire through inclement nights;

There where, firm links in the unyielding chain,

Where fell the long-planned blow and fell in vain—

Hearts worthy of the honour and the trail,

We helped to hold the lines along the Aisne.

Champagne, 1914-1915

In the glad revels, in the happy fetes,

  When cheeks are flushed, and glasses gilt and pearled

With the sweet wine of France that concentrates

  The sunshine and the beauty of the world,

Drink sometimes, you whose footsteps yet may tread

  The undisturbed, delightful paths of Earth,

To those whose blood, in pious duty shed,

  Hallows the soil where the same wine had birth.

Here, by devoted comrades laid away,

  Along our lines they slumber where they fell,

Besides the crater at the Ferme d’Alger

  And up the bloody slopes of La Pompelle,

And around the city whose cathedral towers

  The enemies of Beauty dared profane,

And in the mat of multicolored flowers

  That clothe the sunny chalk-fields of Champagne.

Under the little crosses where they rise

  The soldier rests.  Now round him undismayed

The cannon thunders, and at night he lies

  At peace beneath the eternal fusillade…

That other generations might possess—

  From shame and menace free in years to come—

A richer heritage of happiness,

  He marched to that heroic martyrdom.

Esteeming less the forfeit that he paid

  Than undishonored that his flag might float

Over the towers of liberty, he made

  His breast the bulwark and his blood the moat.

Obscurely sacrificed, his nameless tomb,

  Bare of the sculptor’s art, the poet’s lines,

Summer shall flush with poppy-fields in bloom,

  And Autumn yellow with maturing vines.

There the grape-pickers at their harvesting

  Shall lightly tread and load their wicker trays,

Blessing his memory as they toil and sing

  In the slant sunshine of October days…

I love to think that if my blood should be

  So privileged to sink where his has sunk,

I shall not pass from Earth entirely

  But when banquet rings, when healths are drunk,

And faces that the joys of living fill

  Glow radiant with laughter and good cheer,

In beaming cups some spark of me shall still

  Brim toward the lips that once I held so dear.

So shall one coveting no higher plane

  Than nature clothes in color and flesh and tone,

Even from the grave put forward to attain

  The dreams youth cherished and missed and might have known,

And that strong need that strove unsatisfied

  Toward earthly beauty in all forms it wore,

Not death itself shall utterly divide

  From the beloved shapes it thirsted for.

Alas, how many an adept for whose arms

  Life held delicious offerings perished here,

How many in the prime of all that charms,

  Crowned with all gifts that conquer and endear!

Honor them not so much with tears and flowers,

  But you with whom the sweet fulfillment lies,

Where in the anguish of atrocious hours

  Turned their last thoughts and closed their dying eyes,

Rather when music or bright gathering lays

  Its tender spell, and joy is uppermost,

Be mindful of the men they were, and raise

  Your glasses to them in one silent toast.

Drink to them—amorous of dear Earth as well,

  They asked no tribute lovelier than this—

And in the wine that ripened where they fell,

  Oh, frame your lips as though it were a kiss.

Champagne, France, July, 1915

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

Pete Seeger (as performed by Peter, Paul, and Mary)

Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing?
Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago?
Where have all the flowers gone?
Young girls have picked them everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the young girls gone, long time passing?
Where have all the young girls gone, long time ago?
Where have all the young girls gone?
Gone for husbands everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the husbands gone, long time passing?
Where have all the husbands gone, long time ago?
Where have all the husbands gone?
Gone for soldiers everyone
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the soldiers gone, long time passing?
Where have all the soldiers gone, long time ago?
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards, everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the graveyards gone, long time passing?
Where have all the graveyards gone, long time ago?
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Gone to flowers, everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing?
Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago?
Where have all the flowers gone?
Young girls have picked them everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Thanks, Peter – thank you for everything, Alan .

Asleep, Wilfred Owen

Writer’s Almanac today reminds us that

“It was on this day in 1918 that British war poet Wilfred Owen  was killed in World War I, at the age of 25. In the days before his death, Owen had been excited because he knew the war was almost over. The Germans were retreating and the French had joyfully welcomed the British troops. In his last letter to his mother, Owens wrote: "It is a great life. I am more oblivious than yourself, dear Mother, of the ghastly glimmering of the guns outside, and the hollow crashing of the shells. Of this I am certain: you could not be visited by a band of friends half so fine as surround me here." A few days later, he was trying to get his men across a canal in the early morning hours when they were attacked by enemy fire, and Owen was fatally wounded. The war ended the following week.”

                             Asleep

Under his helmet, up against his pack,

After so many days of work and waking

Sleep took him by the brow and laid him back.

There, in the happy no-time of his sleeping,

Death took him by the heart. There heaved a quaking

Of frustrate life, like child within him leaping…

Then chest and sleepy arms once more fell slack.

And soon the slow stray blood comes creeping

From the intrusive lead, like ants on track.

                        *      *     *     *

Whether his deeper sleep lie shaded by the shaking

Of great wings, and the thoughts of stars.

High-pillowed on calm clouds of God’s making,

Above those clouds, these rains, these sheets of lead,

And these winds’ scimitars;

-- Or whether yet his thin and sodden head

Confuses more and more with the low mould,

His hair being one with the gray grass

Of finished fields, and wire-scrags rusty old,…

Who knows? Who hopes? Who troubles? Let it pass!

He sleeps. He sleeps less tremulous, less cold

Than we who wake, and waking say, Alas!

Coming Home in Triumph in 1918?

 As I have traveled over the years it has become apparent that almost every community in the “western” world has its collection of memorials to those who participated in the conflicts that marked its history. Memorials relating to the American Civil War appear to be the most numerous in the United States, but I believe that in the United Kingdom that position is claimed by the First World War. One of the discoveries I made in researching for this blog is that Britain's Imperial War Museum maintains an outstanding online database of war memorials.

Many of these British First World War memorials are rather austere and even plain cenotaphs or obelisks, etc., reflecting to some degree or another the grief associated with the scale of the losses from the Great War. When they do feature something more, it is often a mournful figure draped in ancient robes or a soldier marked by his stillness and lack of movement or evident energy. The Northumberland Fusiliers monument is an interesting exception in that it features a group of soldiers leaving for the war and surrounded by family, friends, and well-wishers.

But this memorial in Cambridge is the only British memorial that I can recall as presenting any hint or note of triumph. Entitled “The Homecoming”, it was originally It was originally unveiled and dedicated on July 3, 1923 by His Royal Highness the Duke of York - the future King George VI.

Today it is located at the intersection of Hills Road and Station Road (and the Botanical Gardens there) – the latter leading to the railway station that serves the city of Cambridge, the location to which it was moved in 2012.



The memorial includes a single soldier from the ranks, representing the many men of Cambridgeshire who went off to the war. This figure, however, is striding boldly possibly even gleefully homeward from the wars. The Imperial War Museum's database offers some background information on this memorial.

The memorial was dedicated

"TO THE MEN OF CAMBRIDGESHIRE

AND THE ISLE OF ELY, THE BOROUGH

AND UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

WHO SERVED IN THE GREAT WAR

1914-1919

AND IN THE WORLD WAR/ 1939-1945"

- the reference to the Second World War of course being a later addition.

He bears laurel garlands of triumph in his kit and wreathed around the German stahlhelm that is his trophy from the battlefield and signet of victory.

The statue bears the name of its sculptor the names of the memorials sponsors are inscribed on the base. Robert Tait McKenzie was a Canadian American surgeon and sculptor whose interest in the latter reflects and may have been inspired in part by his interest in anatomy and physical fitness. His papers today are now at the University of Pennsylvania.

A very similar (apparently identical) work in the United States is called "The Victor" and was erected in 1925 as a part of the War Memorialin Woodbury, New Jersey. The similarities to “The Homecoming” are evident as are the changes to make this figure a World War I doughboy facing straight ahead as he marches. Personally, I prefer the English version as the soldier’s posture looking to one side from his line of march is much more evocative of the already easing of discipline and the anticipated return to the hard earned joys of peace this soldier would have felt. A Philadelphia Buildings website also presents drawings and other background material on "The Victor" including drawings of how it would look while still merely a proposal. These drawings show how it was already planned for this figure to be different than the one used in "The Homecoming" in Cambridge.

The figure of the British soldier in "The Homecoming" also offers some great details on what his kit would have looked like and how it would have been worn.