Alan Seeger was an American poet who was killed in France in 1916 at the age of 28, one of that lost generation of young men who left us searing poetic evidence of the horrors of World War I. No less a critic than T.S. Eliot, who was his classmate at Harvard, said of Seeger and his work, "It is high-flown, heavily decorated and solemn, but its solemnity is thorough-going, not merely a literary formality. Alan Seeger, as one who knew him can attest, lived his whole life on this plane, with impeccable poetic dignity; everything about him was in keeping." This poem has aged much more gracefully than its historical companion-piece in recitation, "In Flanders Fields," which ends with a rather creepy exhortation to continue the fight: "Take up our quarrel with the foe!. . .If ye break faith with those who die/We shall not sleep, though poppies grow/In Flanders fields." In contrast, Seeger’s tone of tender regret withstands our critical modern ear by its authenticity; his focus on the individual overwhelmed by implacable and faceless forces beyond his control resonates in our age of automated, digitized warfare.
"Rendezvous" by Alan Seeger
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.