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.
* * * * *
And I to my pledged word am true—
I shall not fail that rendezvous.
—_Alan Seeger._
The poem from which the above opening and closing lines are taken was
read for the first time by the majority of those who knew it after the
poet had kept the rendezvous—only a little late of the appointed time,
like a traveler who has missed a train.
Alan Seeger loved France, and when he saw her in peril and his own
America not likely to be brought into the conflict he went to France as
a volunteer. Being an alien he was not eligible to the regular army,
but the Foreign Legion welcomed him to fight for France under its flag.
Among the men of the Legion was Rif Bear, a brilliant and traveled
young Egyptian, and he became the close, the intimate friend of the
poet with whom he found himself entirely in sympathy.
Seeger was under fire in a series of engagements without suffering
hurt, but he seems to have foreboded the end that came in the Champagne
campaign. He was a fatalist as well as a dreamer—and there are those
who believe that we bring to ourselves the fruit of our thoughts.
After Seeger’s death Rif Bear wrote the facts and an appreciation in a
personal letter to a lady in Boston. The letter was in French, but a
translation of it has been published. There is a melancholy interest
in the circumstances that a clerical error in the date of a temporary
leave of absence cheated Seeger of one of the chief joys that could
have come to him as a poet. The letter tells us that he ran one day to
his friend in the triumph of happiness to show him a telegram which
asked him to compose a poem to be read in public at a French-American
demonstration—the memorial day ceremony. He was to have 48 hours leave
in which to write the poem and attend the ceremony. But the promised
leave did not come.
[Illustration:
_Courtesy of Century Company._