The Rendezvous
One of America’s Young Poets Keeps a Tryst While Fighting for France
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.
“The eve of the ceremony arrived—I can not recall the date—but no leave came. We were in the trenches and chance had placed me near Seeger in petit poste (the small outlook-post, some yards in advance of the first line trench). He confessed that he had lost all hope of going, and I tried to find all sorts of arguments to encourage him, that his leave might come at dawn, and that by taking the train at Ressons at 7 a. m. he could still reach Paris by noon and would have plenty of time, as the ceremony was at two.
“The morning came, and instead of bringing the much-desired permission to leave, it brought a terrible downpour of rain, and the day passed sadly. He found consolation in the thought that it was only a postponement and that July 4 would soon arrive, when the Americans with the Foreign Legion might hope for forty-eight hours’ leave, as last year.”
The explanation came later. It was a clerical error that cheated him; the forty-eight hours’ leave granted for the event was made out for June 30, instead of for May 30. Continuing the letter: