become so until after his death. His work was heavily influenced by the Romantic school, and by the precepts of chivalry and medieval ethos of the knight. As the war progressed, the theme of death grew stronger in his poetry, culminating in what became his most famous poem, "I Have a Rendezvous with Death." Death and aftermath In the winter of 1916, he developed bronchitis and spent several months recovering before he returned to the battlefront. He was killed in action in 1916, during a French attack against the Imperial German Army at Belloy-en-Santerre, during the Battle of the Somme. His fellow legionnaire, Rif Baer, later described his last moments: "His tall silhouette stood out on the green of the cornfield. He was the tallest man in his section. His head erect, and pride in his eye, I saw him running forward, with bayonet fixed. Soon he disappeared and that was the last time I saw my friend." After being mortally wounded in no man's land, Seeger cheered on the passing soldiers of the Legion before he finally died from his injuries. According to one account, knowing he was mortally wounded, he killed himself with a gunshot to the head. Seeger had been falsely reported dead after the Battle of Champagne in October 1915, in which he had fought. The news of his actual death was met with public mourning in both America and France. After the USA entered World War I, Poems, a posthumously published collection of Seeger's war poetry, sold out six editions in a year. The poet Edwin Arlington Robinson, who had described Seeger as "the Hedonist" after meeting him in 1911, suggested that it might be best that he had died in the war, "for I don’t believe that he would ever have come anywhere near to fitting himself into this interesting but sometimes unfittable world." It is assumed, and officially stated, that Seeger's bones rest with other dead of the Belloy-en-Santerre battle in ossuary No. 1 of the French National Cemetery in Lihons. After his death, Seeger's parents donated a bell to a local church and planted trees in his honor. Both of their contributions to Belloy-en-Santerre were destroyed during World War II, though the remains of the bell were combined with other metals into a new church bell, and one of the apple trees was believed to be still alive behind the village hall