The Great War produced some of the very best soldier-poets ever. One of them was Alan Seeger who had lived the bohemian life of New York City before running off and joining the War to fight. He had either desired, or predicted, a heroic, youthful, and romantic death for himself. He was granted his wish, being machine gunned to death at the battle of the Somme.
Before he had his own rendezvous with Death, he wrote this most famous poem. Having read it so many times over the years I just felt that it says so much that no illustration is necessary; the poem itself is the art.
I imagine this hanging in someone's home and when so innocent stranger walks by and notices this "painting" they will ask, "Say, old chap, what's this?" Then they just might begin to read it and, well, nothing more needs to be said. It captures the all-too grim reality of these men acute awareness of the proximity of Death itself. Though Seeger died at age 24, his name lives on from the musical career of his more famous nephew, Pete Seeger
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