Areopagus Volume LXVIII

Seven short lessons every someday.

Welcome one and all to the sixty eighth volume of the Areopagus. Tomorrow is the 11th November — Armistice Day, which marks the end of the First World War. Last year I dedicated an entire volume to it; this year, however, I shall but share with you a particularly moving poem written by the American poet Alan Seeger. He served with the French Foreign Legion and fought at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Seeger did not survive, but he has bequeathed to posterity some of the most striking war poetry ever composed. These are the closing stanzas of The Aisne:

Craonne, before thy cannon-swept plateau,
Where like sere leaves lay strewn September's dead,
I found for all dear things I forfeited
A recompense I would not now forego.
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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.
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There we drained deeper the deep cup of life,
And on sublimer summits came to learn,
After soft things, the …