NLSC: SENIOR THREE AGRICULTURE
SENIOR THREE AGRICULTURE Agriculture Senior Three, as outlined in...
Courses
-
-
NLSC: SENIOR THREE CHEMISTRY
SENIOR THREE CHEMISTRY Chemistry is the branch of science that focuses...
-
NLSC: SENIOR THREE GENERAL SCIENCE
SENIOR THREE GENERAL SCIENCE General Science Senior Three, as outlined...
-
NLSC: SENIOR THREE NUTRITION AND FOOD TECHNOLOGY
SENIOR THREE NUTRITION AND FOOD TECHNOLOGY The Senior Three Nutrition and...
-
NLSC: SENIOR THREE CHRISTIAN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
SENIOR THREE CHRISTIAN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION The Senior Three Christian...
-
Access the Comprehensive New A-Level Syllabus across all subjects on Yaaka Digital Learning Platform
New A-Level Syllabus Stay ahead in your academic journey with Yaaka...
Afrikaans
Albanian
Amharic
Arabic
Armenian
Azerbaijani
Basque
Belarusian
Bengali
Bosnian
Bulgarian
Catalan
Cebuano
Chichewa
Chinese (Simplified)
Chinese (Traditional)
Corsican
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
English
Esperanto
Estonian
Filipino
Finnish
French
Frisian
Galician
Georgian
German
Greek
Gujarati
Haitian Creole
Hausa
Hawaiian
Hebrew
Hindi
Hmong
Hungarian
Icelandic
Igbo
Indonesian
Irish
Italian
Japanese
Javanese
Kannada
Kazakh
Khmer
Korean
Kurdish (Kurmanji)
Kyrgyz
Lao
Latin
Latvian
Lithuanian
Luxembourgish
Macedonian
Malagasy
Malay
Malayalam
Maltese
Maori
Marathi
Mongolian
Myanmar (Burmese)
Nepali
Norwegian
Pashto
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Punjabi
Romanian
Russian
Samoan
Scottish Gaelic
Serbian
Sesotho
Shona
Sindhi
Sinhala
Slovak
Slovenian
Somali
Spanish
Sundanese
Swahili
Swedish
Tajik
Tamil
Telugu
Thai
Turkish
Ukrainian
Urdu
Uzbek
Vietnamese
Welsh
Xhosa
Yiddish
Yoruba
Zulu
‘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.
I Have a Rendezvous with Death” Summary
The speaker explains that he will soon meet death, imagining that this will happen on the front lines of a battlefield during springtime, when the leaves on the trees gently shake in the wind and create shade on the ground, and the smell of apple-blossoms is everywhere. Once more, the speaker insists that he has a meeting with death that will take place during the beautiful days and clear skies of springtime.
It’s possible, the speaker upholds, that death will lead him by the hand into an ominous and unknown realm, where death will shut the speaker’s eyes and stop his breathing. However, it’s also possible that the speaker will, for now, manage to slip by death unnoticed. Despite this thought, the speaker repeats that he has a meeting with death, envisioning that this will happen on a hillside destroyed by battle, though he also imagines that the broader setting of this encounter with death will be characterized by the onset of springtime and all the flowers that will blossom in the surrounding fields.
Having said all this, the speaker admits that he would much rather nestle down into the soft and inviting covers of a cozy bed, imagining how nice it would be to sleep happily next to a lover. Continuing this fantasy, the speaker imagines what it’d be like to sleep so close to his lover that their heartbeats and breathing would mingle, and that they would wake up together in a gentle state of happiness. But this thought trails off as the speaker reminds himself that he has a meeting with death, this time imagining that this meeting will occur at midnight in a burning town. Despite this change in scenery, though, the speaker still believes that his death will coincide with spring as it brings warm weather to the cooler northern regions of the world. The speaker then concludes by asserting that he has made a solemn promise that he will not break—namely, that he will not avoid his meeting with death.
“I Have a Rendezvous with Death” Themes
Death and Acceptance
As made clear by the title, “I Have a Rendezvous with Death” is a poem about mortality and, more specifically, the speaker’s acceptance of death. Given this morose subject, readers might expect the speaker to express regret or sorrow that all life must come to an end—but this isn’t the case. Instead, the speaker seems to embrace the inevitability of death, seeing it as something as unavoidable as the onset of spring. And though there is still some uncertainty regarding what the actual experience of death will be like, the speaker never attempts to escape this fate. The poem implies that it would be futile and foolish to resist the simple reality of mortality, which is that everyone is destined to die.
Of course, the circumstances of the speaker’s imminent death are unique. Seeger wrote “I Have a Rendezvous with Death” during his time as a soldier in World War I, which eventually claimed his life. For this reason, the poem is more specifically a war poem in which a soldier—perhaps Seeger himself—contemplates the extreme likelihood that he will soon die in battle. This makes sense of the speaker’s assertion that his “rendezvous” (a date or meeting) will take place on “some scarred slope of battered hill,” an image that evokes the distressed landscape of a battlefield.
What’s more, the idea that the speaker is a soldier contextualizes the slight sense of pride that works its way through the poem and ultimately frames death as somewhat valorous, as if the soldier has made peace with dying precisely because this is something he has “pledged” to do; indeed, he is committed to his fate as a soldier and, thus, has accepted death as a part of that role.
In keeping with this, there is very little regret detectable on the speaker’s behalf. Instead, the speaker simply states that he will surely die very soon, and then he tries to imagine what this will be like, wondering if he will be led into a “dark land.” This is the only kind of uncertainty that characterizes the speaker’s thoughts about death, but it doesn’t change the speaker’s overall outlook on mortality. Rather, the speaker merely expresses curiosity about what it will be like to die. This curiosity is yet another sign that the speaker doesn’t resent or fear death, instead accepting it as something that will happen to him in ways he won’t be able to control—indeed, death might not even come when the speaker expects it to. The only certainty, then, is that it will arrive at some point, and the speaker has accepted this.
To go along with this attitude of acceptance, the speaker also associates his own death with the onset of spring, a season that represents rebirth and new life. This, in turn, implies that the world will continue even as the speaker’s life draws to an end. This is a dynamic that the speaker is aware of and seems to have accepted, since nothing in the poem indicates that he begrudges that the seasons—and the living world at large—will keep turning without him. Once again, then, readers see the extent to which the speaker has come to terms with death as a natural part of existence, recognizing that death is as inevitable and unstoppable as the passage of time.
Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “I Have a Rendezvous with Death”
Form
“I Have a Rendezvous with Death” does not follow a conventional poetic structure. Each of its three stanzas are different lengths, with the first containing six lines, the second containing eight lines, and the third containing ten lines. In this way, the poem balloons out as it works its way toward the end.
Each stanza accomplishes something slightly different. The first sets forth the premise of the poem, which is that the speaker will soon die and that this will happen even as the world begins to blossom with the onset of spring. The second stanza focuses on the speaker’s curiosity about what it will actually be like to die, as he imagines several scenarios before reiterating that—no matter what happens—he will die when spring comes around. Then, in the final stanza, the speaker briefly fantasizes about avoiding his death on the battlefield and, instead of sacrificing his life, lying in bed with a lover. In the second half of the stanza, though, he shifts back to his original commitment to embracing death.
In turn, it becomes clear that, although each stanza functions differently, they all feature a reiteration of the speaker’s initial idea: that he has an unavoidable “rendezvous” (or meeting) with death. Accordingly, the poem’s structure gives the speaker space to explore new ideas in each stanza while also underlining the central idea about death’s inevitability.
Meter
The poem is written in iambic tetrameter, a meter in which each line contains four iambs. An iamb is a metrical foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. This means that a line of iambic tetrameter features a da–DUM rhythm that repeats four times in a row. The first two lines of the poem are perfect examples of this:
On the whole, “I Have a Rendezvous with Death” adheres to closely to this meter, especially considering the fact that nearly every single line is made up of eight syllables. Indeed, line 14 is the only one in the entire poem that has nine syllables, but even this slight deviation doesn’t throw off the overall meter of the poem.
However, there are several notable moments in which the poem strays from the standard iambic rhythm. For instance, the first two lines of the third stanza use certain metrical substitutions that emphasize especially important words:
In both of these lines, the speaker doesn’t begin with an iamb (unstressed–stressed). Line 15 starts off with a spondee, which is a metrical foot made up of two consecutive stressed syllables. This calls attention to the expression “God knows,” ultimately suggesting that the speaker is very much aware of how preferable it would be to stay home safe from the war. Furthermore, the word “Pillowed” in line 16 is a trochee, meaning that it contains a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. This divergence from the poem’s overall iambic rhythm urges readers to pay extra close attention, underlining just how much the speaker would like to be in bed rather than headed toward death on the battlefield.
In keeping with this sentiment, line 18 features yet another metrical substitution:
Again, the first foot of this line is a trochee instead of an iamb. This spotlights the word “pulse,” which is also the stressed syllable in the line’s second foot. This has an interesting effect, as readers will perhaps notice that the only stressed words in this entire line are “pulse” and “breath.” In turn, the speaker is able to more vividly convey the fantasy of lying close enough to a lover to hear that person’s heartbeat and exhalations. With this in mind, then, it becomes clear that the speaker’s use of meter helps highlight moments that might not otherwise jump out at readers quite as prominently.
Rhyme Scheme
The poem’s rhyme scheme is irregular. Although some lines contain end rhymes, these rhymes do not establish a discernible pattern. Rather, the speaker uses them whenever they might enhance the sound and musicality of a given section. Bearing this in mind, it’s worth pointing out that the poem’s lack of a predictable rhyme scheme doesn’t mean it doesn’t still include quite a few rhymes. In fact, every line of the first stanza features a rhyme. If one were to map this stanza out, it would look like this:
ABBCAC
The rhyme that occurs between lines 1 and line 5 is called an identical rhyme, since both lines end with the word “Death.” Otherwise, the rhymes in this stanza are fairly straightforward. This, in turn, reflects the speaker’s thoughtful, measured take on his inevitable death.
This, however, is not to say that the rest of the poem follows the rhyme scheme set forth in the first stanza. Indeed, the second stanza makes this quite clear, since its first two lines rhyme—something that isn’t the case in the first stanza. Here is the full scheme of the second stanza:
AABCBCDD
And here is that of the third, which is especially unpredictable:
ABACDCEDFF
The rhyme between the words “true” and “rendezvous” are the only two consecutive lines in the entire stanza that rhyme with one another, so they sound especially linked, thereby emphasizing that the speaker will be “true” to his commitment to meet death on the battlefield. This neat and tidy couplet also helps to lend the poem a sense of closure.
“I Have a Rendezvous with Death” Speaker
The speaker of “I Have a Rendezvous with Death” is a soldier who believes he will soon die on the battlefield. Because Alan Seeger served in World War I and lost his life in battle not long after writing this poem, many readers choose to view the speaker as Seeger himself. Under this interpretation, the poem gives readers a snapshot of Seeger’s thoughts about death and his sense of soldierly duty. And even if readers choose not to view the speaker as Seeger, it is safe to assume that the speaker is a man, since the only soldiers on the battlefields of World War I were men. Whether or not the speaker is Seeger, then, what’s clear is that “I Have a Rendezvous with Death” is a poem that spotlights a young man’s attempt to embrace the idea of dying a violent death instead of going on to live an unbothered, care-free life.
“I Have a Rendezvous with Death” Setting
“I Have a Rendezvous with Death” is considered a war poem, since it is about the speaker’s certainty that he will soon die on the battlefield. The poem is most often associated with World War I, since it was published in 1917 (one year before the end of the war) and was composed by Alan Seeger, who served in WWI. More generally, though, the speaker also implies that the poem is set at the end of winter, since he imagines that his death will take place soon and that it will coincide with the onset of spring.
However, the actual circumstances of his death vary throughout the poem, going from “some disputed barricade” to a “scarred slope of battered hill” to “some flaming town.” These details change because the speaker isn’t exactly sure where he’ll die, since he’s only imagining his death. In this way, the poem presents several hypothetical settings and even takes readers into the mysteriously “dark land” of death itself, all while remaining fixed in the broader context of life during wartime.
Literary and Historical Context of “I Have a Rendezvous with Death”
Literary Context
“I Have a Rendezvous with Death” belongs to a category of early 20th-century poetry devoted to detailing the ins and outs of life during World War I. In particular, the proud and dutiful tone of this poem aligns with the patriotic, celebratory attitude expressed in Rupert Brooke’s “The Soldier,” which valorizes military service in World War I.
Of course, not all poems about World War I are quite so optimistic. Poets like Wilfred Owen, for instance, focused in their writing on the suffering and sorrow of combat. Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” is especially brutal in its depiction of life in the trenches of World War I, as is Siegfried Sassoon’s poem “Attack.” In a way, then, these poems represent a completely different view of the very same war that Alan Seeger so eagerly celebrates in “I Have a Rendezvous with Death.”
The sense of soldierly pride expressed in “Rendezvous” aligns with Seeger’s overall outlook on military service during World War I. Seeger was living in Paris when the war began, and didn’t hesitate to volunteer for the French military. He believed that this was the right thing to do and that his home country—the United States—wasn’t doing enough to involve itself in the war effort. He expressed these sentiments in the essays and poems he wrote while serving in the military, simultaneously celebrating his fellow soldiers who had died and encouraging others (and particularly his fellow Americans) to join the fight.
Throughout this time, his poetic style reflected his admiration for the Romantic poets and their descriptions of beauty in nature. As time passed, though, he wrote more and more about death, eventually writing “I Have a Rendezvous with Death.” By the time the poem was published in 1917, Seeger had already died, losing his life on July 4, 1916, during the Battle of the Somme.
Historical Context
World War I began in 1914, when Alan Seeger was living as a young man in Paris. As previously mentioned, he quickly volunteered to fight for the French military, believing that it was the right thing to do because he ardently supported the Triple Entente, which was the name of the alliance formed between France, Britain, and Russia to fight Germany, Italy, and Austria-Hungary.
It’s worth noting that Seeger was an American but that the United States didn’t get involved in the war until 1917, when the country deployed two million soldiers to fight on behalf of the Triple Entente. As an American, Seeger was critical of his country’s hesitation to join the war effort, seeing it as the moral thing to do. For this reason, he was outspoken about his disappointment in the United States, specifically calling attention to this dynamic in his written work.
“I Have a Rendezvous with Death” proved prophetic: Seeger died in battle, specifically, in the infamous Battle of the Somme, which took place on the banks of the River Somme in France from July 1st to November 18th, 1916. In this battle, British and French allies fought tirelessly to gain ground against the German Empire, but the two sides remained all but deadlocked for many months. In the end, the battle claimed a staggering amount of lives, and the British and French forces only gained about six miles of territory. Although this was considered a respectable amount of ground to gain, whether the Battle of the Somme was all that effective in the Germans’ overall defeat in World War I is still up for debate. Needless to say, Seeger did not live to see the results of this excruciatingly long battle, since he died three days into the fighting
Duty and Honor
In many ways, the speaker in “I Have a Rendezvous with Death” sees death as a form of duty. This is because the poem focuses specifically on military honor and war-related deaths, a fact made clear by the suggestion that the speaker will die on a battlefield (or “some scarred slope of battered hill”).
With this in mind, the soldier’s unphased attitude toward death is a bit easier to understand, since it’s clear that he’s contemplating mortality within the context of military duty. This makes it possible for the speaker to conceive of death as an honorable sacrifice rather than a meaningless tragedy. And though the speaker implies in the third stanza that it would be preferable to avoid war and, thus, an untimely death, this is only a fleeting thought that doesn’t interfere with the speaker’s solemn yet assured willingness to die on the battlefield—a willingness that arises from an honorable sense of duty and commitment to a cause. By putting this perspective on display, then, the poem suggests that it is possible to embrace even the most dismal fate when one sees it as related to a respectable, worthwhile responsibility.
The majority of the poem spotlights the speaker’s unemotional acknowledgment that he is destined to die, as made evident by the fact that the phrase “I have a rendezvous with Death” repeats three times in just 14 lines. However, what seems like the speaker’s complete acceptance of this notion is called into question at the beginning of the third stanza, when the speaker admits that lying in bed next to a lover would be much “better” than facing death on a battlefield. At this moment, the speaker briefly allows himself to entertain the idea that he doesn’t have to die, or at least not anytime soon. Indeed, it is only because he’s in the military during World War I that his death seems so imminent and unavoidable, not because he’s actually fated to die in any kind of predetermined or spiritual sense (or at least not so soon).
Although the soldier’s confession that it would be better to lie with a lover than to march toward a bloody death might suggest that he’s not as willing to die as it seems, he doesn’t let these thoughts actually interfere with what he sees as his soldierly duty. To that end, his fantasy about lying in bed trails off with an ellipsis as if passing through his mind, at which point he reiterates: “But I’ve a rendezvous with Death.” This return to his original conviction demonstrates his steadfast commitment to the idea of putting his life on the line as a soldier.
As if to further illustrate this, the speaker adds, “And I to my pledged word am true, / I shall not fail that rendezvous,” revealing that he has actively committed himself to facing death in the name of military service—a commitment he has sworn not to abandon. Above all, this is a testament to the power of duty, which can give a person the kind of honor or pride that is evident in the speaker’s principled refusal to break his “word.” And it is this kind of duty-related honor that makes it possible for people to unflinchingly make sacrifices or face otherwise undesirable circumstances.
https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/alan-seeger/i-have-a-rendezvous-with-death
Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “I Have a Rendezvous with Death”
Lines 1-4
The poem begins with the speaker declaring that he has a “rendezvous” with death. A “rendezvous” is a meeting or appointment, and this line thus suggests that the speaker’s encounter with death has already been planned out or decided upon, that the speaker’s death has been somehow predetermined. Of course, this is impossible, but this idea underscores the extent to which the speaker is sure that he will soon die. The word “rendezvous” also has certain military connotations, since it is often used to refer to an assembly point where troops are supposed to meet or gather.
The militaristic association that comes along with the word “rendezvous” helps make sense of the phrase “disputed barricade” in line 2, clarifying that the speaker is alluding to the front lines of a battlefield, where the “disputed barricade” is the clash of two armies fighting to gain new ground. This, in turn, implies that the speaker expects to die in combat.
At the same time, the idea of meeting death at “some disputed barricade” could also be interpreted as an acknowledgment of the uncertainty surrounding the actual experience of death. After all, even if the speaker is confident that he’ll die on the battlefield, he has no idea what it will be like to actually pass through the barrier between life and death. It is this sense of uncertainty, then, that makes the “barricade” between the world of the living and the world of the dead feel “disputed.”
Furthermore, lines 3 and 4 associate the speaker’s upcoming death with the emergence of spring. Consequently, a sense of juxtaposition arises between the imminent end of the speaker’s life and the kind of rebirth and continuation that spring represents. Accordingly, it becomes clear that the speaker recognizes that the world will go on without him, continuing to blossom in beautiful ways despite the fact that he’s destined to die a bloody death on the battlefield (at least according to him).
Though one might expect this to upset the speaker, he seems relatively unfazed by the idea of his own death. Rather than bemoaning his unfortunate circumstances, he simply states—without any apparent display of emotion—that he will soon meet death, and his lack of sentimentality regarding this idea suggests that he has accepted this as his fate.
It’s also noteworthy that these opening lines establish the overall rhythm of the poem. The speaker uses iambic tetrameter, meaning that each line contains four iambs: metrical feet consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. This creates a da–DUM da–DUM rhythm that runs throughout the poem:
In addition, readers will notice that the second and third lines include end rhymes (“barricade” and “shade”) but that the first and fourth lines do not; interestingly enough, this is not the beginning of a set rhyme scheme, but rather an example of how the speaker employs random rhymes, matching certain lines with each other to enhance the sound and musicality of the poem without committing to an actual pattern.