Page:Poems, Alan Seeger, 1916.djvu/39

 the precaution not to stay in front of the glassless windows through which the sharpshooters can snipe at you from their posts in the thickets on the slopes of the plateau, not six hundred metres away. Sometimes our artillery opens up and then you lay down your book for a while, and, looking through a peek-hole, watch the 75's and 120's throw up fountains of dirt and débris all along the line of the enemy's trenches.

"Spring has come here at last," so the letter closes, "and we are having beautiful weather. I am going in swimming in the Aisne this afternoon for the first time. In fine health and spirits."

During the summer, the Legion was moved about a good deal from sector to sector, and Alan often found himself in pleasant places, and got a good deal of positive enjoyment out of his life. On June 18, 1915, he wrote to his mother:

The same note recurs in a letter of two weeks later (July 3):

Whether I am on the winning or losing side is not the point with me: it is being on the side where my sympathies lie that xxxv