Alan Seeger quotes:

So die as though your funeral Ushered you through the doors that led Into a stately banquet hall Where heroes banqueted.

Oft as by chance, a little while apart The pall of empty, loveless hours withdrawn, Sweet Beauty, opening on the impoverished heart, Beams like a jewel on the breast of dawn.

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.

I have a rendezvous with death... I will not fail that rendezvous

From a boy I gloated on existence. Earth to me Seemed all-sufficient and my sojourn there One trembling opportunity for joy.

At Earth's great market where Joy is trafficked in, Buy while thy purse yet swells with golden Youth.

Spirit of Beauty, whose sweet impulses, flung like rose of dawn across the sea, alone can flush the exalted consciousness with shafts of sensible divinity-light of the world, essential loveliness.

There was a stately drama writ By the hand that peopled the earth and air, And set the stars in the infinite, And made night gorgeous and morning fair; And all that had sense to reason knew That bloody drama must be gone through. Some sat and watched how the action veered-- Waited, profited, trembled, cheered-- We saw not clearly nor understood, But yielding ourselves to the masterhand, Each in his part as best he could, We played it through as the author planned.