War and the Muses - Alan Seeger’s Rendezvous

Born in 1888, Alan Seeger graduated from Harvard in 1910. Over the next four years he pursued the life of a bohemian poet in New York’s Greenwich Village and Paris’ Latin Quarter, where he found himself upon the outbreak of World War I. Three weeks later, on August 24, 1914, Seeger volunteered for service, joining the Foreign Legion. By mid-1916, he had fought in Champagne, on the Aisne, and in Alsace. Wounded in February 1915, Seeger spent some months in a rest home recuperating from his injuries and exhaustion. Meanwhile, between campaigns he continued to write poetry – none of which was ever published in his lifetime – and maintained an enormous correspondence. 

His most famous poem – and the only one widley known – was Rendezvous, sometimes known by its first line, I Have a Rendezvous with Death.

            Rendezvous

I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air--
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath--
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear . . .
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

Alan Seeger kept his rendezvous; mortally wounded on, of all days, July 4, 1916, at Belloy-en-Santerre, France, during the Battle of the Somme, he died the next day. On Christmas Day, 1916, the Headquarters, Moroccan Division, issued an Order of the Day citing Seeger as “A young legionnaire, enthusiastic and energetic, animated with a passion for France. He voluntarily enlisted on the outbreak of hostilities, demonstrating in the course of the war admirable spirit and courage,” to accompany the award of France’s two highest decorations, the Croix de Guerre and Médaille Militaire.

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