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Alan Seeger

I Have a Rendezvous with Death...

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.

Listen to this poem

Read by Phil Schempf · Source: Librivox.org

About the poet

Alan SeegerAlan Seeger
1888-1916

 
By the same poet
Juvenilia
An Ode to Natural Beauty
The Deserted Garden
The Torture of Cuauhtemoc
The Nympholept
The Wanderer
The Need to Love
El Extraviado
La Nue
All That's Not Love...
Paris
The Sultan’s Palace
Fragments
Thirty Sonnets
Sonnet I
Sonnet II
Sonnet III
Sonnet IV
Sonnet V
Sonnet VI
Sonnet VII
Sonnet VIII
Sonnet IX
Sonnet X
Sonnet XI
Sonnet XII
Sonnet XIII
Sonnet XIV
Sonnet XV
Sonnet XVI
Kyrenaikos
Antinous
Vivien
I Loved...
Virginibus Puerisque...
With a Copy of Shakespeare’s Sonnets on Leaving College
Written in a Volume of the Comtesse de Noailles
Coucy
Tezcotzinco
The Old Lowe House, Staten Island
Oneata
On the Cliffs, Newport
To England at the Outbreak of the Balkan War
At the Tomb of Napoleon Before the Elections in America—November, 1912
The Rendezvous
Do You Remember Once...
The Bayadere
Eudæmon
Broceliande
Lyonesse
Tithonus
An Ode to Antares
Translations
Dante. Inferno, Canto XXVI
Ariosto. Orlando Furioso, Canto X, 91-99
On a Theme in the Greek Anthology
After an Epigram of Clement Marot
Last Poems
The Aisne (1914-15)
Champagne (1914-15)
The Hosts
Maktoob
Sonnets
Sonnet I
Sonnet II
Sonnet III
Sonnet IV
Sonnet V
Sonnet VI
Sonnet VII
Sonnet VIII
Sonnet IX
Sonnet X
Sonnet XI
Sonnet XII
Bellinglise
Liebestod
Resurgam
A Message to America
Introduction and Conclusion of a Long Poem
Ode in Memory of the American Volunteers Fallen for France
 
Related books
Alan Seeger at amazon.co.uk