The Last Post

Sean Lynch here plays The Last Post at the Armistice Day poetry reading in Navan Library. Video courtesy of Michael Sheils and the "sheriff144" site on youtube. I was looking for a poem to accompany the above or suitable to the occasion and settled on an excerpt from Alan Seeger's "Rendezvous". Alan Seeger was an American poet who enlisted in the French Foriegn Legion in August 1914 and was killed at Belloy-En-Santerre on July the 4th 1916. His poem was said to be a favourite of JFK and Jackie would recite it from memory at his request. Info and with thanks to Wikipedia for the above. He was an uncle I believe of the famous American folk singer Pete Seeger. I came across this poem myself many years ago when reading a book on the French Foriegn legion and it tends to stay in the memory.

(Last Verse)

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.

Alan Seeger.