'The Long Road Home' - Rendezvous With Death

The  Long Road Home, an 8-part event series, will premiere November 7th on the Nat Geo Channel (a/k/a the National Geographic Channel). Based on ABC News journalist Martha Raddatz’s best-selling book, the drama stars Michael Kelly, Kate Bosworth, Jason Ritter, Jeremy Sisto and Noel Fisher.

In a new trailer for the series, actors Sisto, Fisher, Ritter, Bosworth and Kelly recite lines from Alan Seeger's classic 1916 World War I poem, “I Have a Rendezvous With Death.”

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The Long Road Home chronicles April 4, 2004, the day that is known as the Iraq War's "Black Sunday." The First Cavalry Division from Fort Hood, Texas, was ambushed in Sadr City, Baghdad. The series follows the men in action and the reactions of their families back home in Texas.

Seeger was an American poet who served in the French Foreign Legion during WWI. He fought and died at the Battle of the Somme. We've reprinted the poem below.

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.