Seeger probably wrote this poem in early 1916, in anticipation of renewed fighting later that year. That Fourth of July, during the first week of the Anglo-French offensive along the Somme River, Seeger’s regiment of the Foreign Legion attacked the village of Belloy-en-Santerre. Struck several times by machine-gun fire, Seeger reportedly cheered on his comrades in their successful advance before he died. His Poems were published posthumously in December 1916, and his Letters and Diaries appeared in May 1917; some reviewers compared him to the Romantic English poet Rupert Brooke, who had died from blood poisoning in 1915 while serving with the Royal Navy in the Aegean. American supporters of the Allies lauded Seeger as a hero; his brother, Charles, a prominent musicologist (and future father of the folksinger Pete Seeger), became an outspoken opponent of intervention.
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.