The Hosts
The Hosts
Original Text
Alan Seeger, Poems, introduction by William Archer (London: Constable, 1919), pp. 138-40. PS 3537 E26 1917 ROBA.
1Purged, with the life they left, of all
2That makes life paltry and mean and small,
3In their new dedication charged
4With something heightened, enriched, enlarged,
5That lends a light to their lusty brows
6And a song to the rhythm of their trampling feet,
7These are the men that have taken vows,
8These are the hardy, the flower, the élite,--
9These are the men that are moved no more
10By the will to traffic and grasp and store
11And ring with pleasure and wealth and love
12The circles that self is the centre of;
13But they are moved by the powers that force
14The sea for ever to ebb and rise,
16And marshal at noon in tropic skies
17The clouds that tower on some snow-capped chair
18And drift out over the peopled plain.
19They are big with the beauty of cosmic things.
20Mark how their columns surge! They seem
21To follow the goddess with outspread wings
22That points toward Glory, the soldier's dream.
23With bayonets bare and flags unfurled,
24They scale the summits of the world
25And fade on the farthest golden height
26In fair horizons full of light.
27Comrades in arms there--friend or foe--
28That trod the perilous, toilsome trail
29Through a world of ruin and blood and woe
30In the years of great decision--hail!
31Friend or foe, it shall matter nought;
32This only matters, in fine: we fought.
33For we were young and in love or strife
34Sought exultation and craved excess:
35To sound the wildest debauch in life
36We staked our youth and its loveliness.
37Let idlers argue the right and wrong
38And weigh what merit our causes had.
39Putting our faith in being strong--
40Above the level of good and bad--
41For us, we battled and burned and killed
42Because evolving Nature willed,
43And it was our pride and boast to be
44The instruments of Destiny.
45There was a stately drama writ
46By the hand that peopled the earth and air
47And set the stars in the infinite
48And made night gorgeous and morning fair,
49And all that had sense to reason knew
50That bloody drama must be gone through.
51Some sat and watched how the action veered--
52Waited, profited, trembled, cheered--
53We saw not clearly nor understood,
54But yielding ourselves to the master hand,
55Each in his part as best he could,
56We played it through as the author planned.
Notes
15] Arcturus: bright star ("bear watcher") in the constellation Boötes. Back to Line
Publication Start Year
1916
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
RPO 1998.