on Decoration Day, May 30, 1916, had his leave of absence come in time, is prophetic of his own death, when he expresses the hope that, "accents of ours were in the fierce melee," and says:
Now heaven be thanked, a few brave drops were ours."
It was his, as he wished it—"the rare privilege of dying well," for it is known that, as he lay mortally wounded, after the first onslaught, under the fire of six German machine men, he cheered the next advancing line of his companions and urged them on to victory with an English marching song, and his last failing breath.
The "Ode" before referred to, is one of the finest productions of his pen and brain—his whole soul and heart were in it—and it is the more remarkable in that it was completed in two days while he was engaged in the hardest physical labor in the trenches. In it he wrote his own best epitaph.
The value of his work can never be fully or rightly estimated. Of the three contemporaries, herein considered, he seems to me to rank highest in true and delicate poetic feeling. His passion for beauty revealed itself every- where, through his great gift of song. The spirit of Romance was strong in its appeal for him; he dreamed it, he found beautiful expression for it, he lived it, from glad choice, even to the "great adventure" which Death invited him to share.
Perhaps it was because, throughout his life, he was surrounded by beauty; first, in his life on Staten Island, later in his sojourn amidst the sunlight and splendor and romantic environments of Mexico, and still later in his
