I Have a Rendezvous with Death...

Now, this particular poem was written during World War I. It was written by a young Frenchman and American citizen, Alan Seeger, in 1915, but was not published until 1917, a year after his rendezvous with death at the battlefront at Belloy-en-Santerre, July 4, 1916. He attended Harvard University, and was T.S. Eliot's classmate and friend. His last postcard sent home to his family read:
"We go up to the attack tomorrow. This will probably be the biggest thing yet. We are to have the honor of marching in the first wave...I will write you soon if I get through all right. If not, my only earthly care is for my poems...I am glad to be in the first wave. If you are in this thing at all it is best to be in to the limit. And this is the supreme experience." - June 28, 1916

I Have a Rendezvous with Death...
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.