Examine the view that the poems in "Tipperary Days" are unfailingly positive about war.

’Rendezvous’ by Alan Seeger is not unfailingly positive about the war, but does romanticise it. The idea of the speaker ‘hav[ing] a rendezvous with Death’ clearly presents the fact that many soldiers believed that to die in war was a worthy way to die. This is due to the fact that it was thought that it was a masculine way to die and would cause them to become stereotypically masculine and well-respected by society. Some men, such as Hibbert in ‘Journey’s End’ almost faced the risk of being shot for abandoning the front, in the eyes of society this would have been extremely shameful and the highest level of cowardice. The fact that death is personified  highlights the way Seeger is romanticising the war, by personifying death he is making it appear as more human and something which he could have a ‘Rendezvous’ with, therefore suggesting he is romanticising war. Also, in the second stanza death is referred to as “he”, the fact that death is being personified as a male shows that it is a dominant force and cannot be outdone or over-powered. This demonstrates that while war is seen in a romantic light, death is unavoidable and therefore war is for the most part seen to be negative by the speaker. Seeger’s  ‘Rendezvous’ is similar to John McRae’s ‘In Flanders Fields’ in that they both discuss a relationship with death. McRae does this less explicitly than Seeger does by making the speaker of the poem a dead soldier who is instructing men to fight in the war, this is evident when the speaker says “now we lie In Flanders Fields”. ‘In Flanders Fields’ does not romanticise war in the way ‘Rendezvous’ does as it refers to it as a “quarrel”, but it does use death as a negative aspect of war and therefore shows that the poems cannot be seen as unfailingly positive about war. The fact that death has been made a theme within both poems show that the speakers accept that the war cannot be seen in the same way it was before the Battle of the Somme. The Somme was fought in 1916 and both of the poems were written after this Battle and would therefore and would portray war as more negative than poems which were written earlier on in the war, for example the poems in the chapter ‘Happy is England Now’. However, it may be argued that the poems are unfailingly positive about the war as the language used to describe it may be seen as positive. ‘Rendezvous’ uses words such as “fair” to present the idea of a rendezvous with death as a positive thing which could not be avoided and must just be accepted. This argument is for the most part invalid because the rest of the poem uses harsher words such as “scarred” to present the harsh reality of the war as something which brought inevitable death to the soldiers.