I HAVE A RENDEZVOUS WITH DEATH[1]
Reading edition
I HAVE A RENDEZVOUS WITH DEATH[1]
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.
Lieut. Col. John McCrae was a Canadian physician who served in the South African war as an artilleryman. He was on his way to Canada when the war began in 1914, and immediately upon landing he entered the Val Cartier training camp and was commissioned a Captain. Later he joined the McGill Hospital corps and went with it to France, where he rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, and died in service, January 28, 1918.
His poem, “In Flanders’ Fields,” was written on the Flanders front in the Spring of 1915. Its inspiration is thus explained by Sergeant Charles E. Bisset, of the 19th Battalion, 1st Brigade, Canadian Infantry:
“On the Flanders front in the early Spring of 1915, when the war had settled down to trench fighting, two of the most noticeable features of the field were, first, the luxuriant growth of red poppies appearing among the graves of the fallen soldiers, and second, that only one species of bird—the larks—remained on the field during the fighting. As soon as the cannonading ceased, they would rise in the air, singing.”