Page:Poems, Alan Seeger, 1916.djvu/23

 instance, he had not forgotten Mexico when he wrote in a volume of the Comtesse de Noailles:

And even when the tropics were finally left behind, he carried with him in his memory their profusion of colour, an ever-ready palette on which to draw. Assuredly it was a fortunate chance that took this lover of sunlight and space and splendor, in his most receptive years, to regions where they superabound. Perhaps, had he been confined to gloomier climates, he could not have written:

But the same good fortune pursued him throughout. He seemed predestined to environments of beauty. When, at fourteen, he left his Mexican home, it was to go to the Hackley School at Tarrytown, N. Y., an institution placed on a high hill overlooking that noblest of rivers, the Hudson, and surrounded by a domain of its own, extending to many acres of meadow and woodland. An attack of scarlet fever in his childhood had left his health far from robust, and it was thought that the altitude of Mexico City was too great for him. He therefore spent one of his vacations among the hills of New Hampshire, and was afterwards given a year out of school, with the family of his former tutor, in Southern California—again a region famed for its beauty. He returned much xix