With thanks to Dr Connie Ruzich for finding this poet and posting one of his poems
on her website Behind their LInes*
Daniel Sargent was born in Wareham, Massachusets, USA of a Uniterian family in 1890. He studied at Harvard University from 1908 to 1913 and became a tutor at Harvard University from 1914 to 1934.
In 1916, after travelling in Europe, Daniel volunteered to serve with the American Ambulance Service in France, later becoming a Lieutenant in the Fifth Field Artillery, American Expeditionary Force (A.E.F)
In 1919 Daniel was received into the Catholic Church - his "first conscious inclination to the Faith" came while reading Dante at University.
Here is one of Daniel's poems:
“VERDUN “ by Daniel Sargent
I
Men that march up to Verdun!
How the tread that flowed like a rhythm is drowned by a sea
That storms at a fortress of Europe loved by the sun.
And the sun fares low to the cheek and it tenderly
Touches with courage the white dust guarding them on.
On moves their cloud in its dream, and the sun with its gold
Sinks blind in the darkness of hills. A chill ! They have turned
To the ancient mercy of sky; in the calm of its fold
A wing of bright silver flashed. — To the sun it still burned.
Men that are birds! It is gone! And the dusk of the way
Melts under a gate to a gloom, where the glint of the eye
Turns black at the ruins which lower, and tongue-less that pray.
And the Meuse steals under their path like a vein of the sky.
O the black steep cliff of the Meuse with the sky at its brow!
They mount from the foothills that shake, to the ridges, grow dim
In the smoke that shakes on the forehead of thunder, Now!
And a lightning shows what is dark in the tillage grim !
Men that march up to Verdun!
II
Men that march down from Verdun!
Look ! a sign like a lamp at a tomb has glared in the East!
First pale as a mist in a brook, then lifted and clear,
And the wall of the sky turns glass, and a star-light has ceased ;
So down through the stealth of ravines they trickle and veer.
How still is the Meuse! A bridge; dark, loud to the tread!
Then a city of tombs, and at last the long highway has stilled
The roar that disputed the world. And the silence is spread
Like a tribute fair to the dawn. And the silence is filled
By the mornfng song of a bird. But they march as yet owned
By the chaos once that was all, still rumbling behind.
The dust, it is sweet with the dew. The calm day is throned
On the fair blue might of the hills. They are plodding still blind.
Till at last as by doom of a full-chorded rush of the leaves
Of long-guarding poplars up leaps the sun to partake
Of the bright fair order of France, its fields, and its eaves,
And proves them of France once again by their shadows which wake.
Men that march down from Verdun !
From the poetry collection “The Door: And Other Poems” by Daniel Sargent (Richard G. Badger, The Gorham Press, Boston, 1921) - 54 pages - “Verdun” – pp.41 – 43. This is available as a free downloan on Archive: https://archive.org/details/doorotherpoems00sarg/page/40/mode/2up
 |
| Trucks of Verdun by Georges Scott (1873 – 1943) |
Sources
https://thecatholicnewsarchive.org/?a=d&d=CTR19370520-01.2.62&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN--------
https://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/27/obituaries/daniel-sargent-is-dead-a-biographer-and-poet.html
For another poem by Daniel Sargent please see Dr Connie Ruzich's website:
https://behindtheirlines.blogspot.com/2015/07/through-names-i-walk.html
