Poems from Camp and Trench, a Selection

Poems by Isaac Rosenberg — Break of Day in the Trenches
Isaac Rosenberg
Exported from Wikisource on 05/20/20
For works with similar titles, see Break of Day.
For works with similar titles, see Break of Day in the Trenches.
BREAK OF DAY IN THE TRENCHES
The darkness crumbles away—
It is the same old druid Time as ever.
Only a live thing leaps my hand—
A queer sardonic rat—
As I pull the parapet's poppy
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies
(And God knows what antipathies).
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German—
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes
Less chanced than you for life,
Bonds to the whims of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.
What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurled through still heavens?
What quaver—what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in man's veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe,
Just a little white with the dust.
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Poems by Isaac Rosenberg — Killed in Action
Isaac Rosenberg
Exported from Wikisource on 05/20/20
KILLED IN ACTION
Your "Youth"[1] has fallen from its shelf,
And you have fallen, you yourself.
They knocked a soldier on the head,
I mourn the poet who fell dead.
And yet I think it was by chance,
By oversight you died in France.
You were so poor an outward man,
So small against your spirit's span,
That Nature, being tired awhile,
Saw but your outward human pile;
And Nature, who would never let
A sun with light still in it set,
Before you even reached your sky,
In inadvertence let you die.
↑ "Youth," a volume of poems by I. Rosenberg.
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Poems by Isaac Rosenberg — Returning, we hear the Larks
Isaac Rosenberg
Exported from Wikisource on 05/20/20
RETURNING, WE HEAR THE LARKS
Sombre the night is:
And, though we have our lives, we know
What sinister threat lurks there.
Dragging these anguished limbs, we only know
This poison-blasted track opens on our camp—
On a little safe sleep.
But hark! Joy—joy—strange joy.
Lo! Heights of night ringing with unseen larks:
Music showering on our upturned listening faces.
Death could drop from the dark
As easily as song—
But song only dropped,
Like a blind man's dreams on the sand
By dangerous tides;
Like a girl's dark hair, for she dreams no ruin lies
there,
Or her kisses where a serpent hides.
About this digital edition
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Poems by Isaac Rosenberg — The Destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonian Hordes
Isaac Rosenberg
Exported from Wikisource on 05/20/20
THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM BY THE BABYLONIAN HORDES
They left their Babylon bare
Of all its tall men,
Of all its proud horses;
They made for Lebanon.
And shadowy sowers went
Before their spears to sow
The fruit whose taste is ash,
For Judah's soul to know.
They who bowed to the Bull god,
Whose wings roofed Babylon,
In endless hosts darkened
The bright-heavened Lebanon.
They washed their grime in pools
Where laughing girls forgot
The wiles they used for Solomon.
Sweet laughter, remembered not!
Sweet laughter charred in the flame
That clutched the cloud and earth,
While Solomon's towers crashed between
To a gird of Babylon's mirth.
About this digital edition
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Poems by Isaac Rosenberg — The Burning of the Temple
Isaac Rosenberg
Exported from Wikisource on 05/20/20
THE BURNING OF THE TEMPLE
Fierce wrath of Solomon,
Where sleepest thou? O see,
The fabric which thou won
Earth and ocean to give thee—
O look at the red skies.
Or hath the sun plunged down?
What is this molten gold—
These thundering fires blown
Through heaven, where the smoke rolled?
Again the great king dies.
His dreams go out in smoke.
His days he let not pass
And sculptured here are broke,
Are charred as the burnt grass,
Gone as his mouth's last sighs.
About this digital edition
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Poems by Isaac Rosenberg — Home-Thoughts from France
Isaac Rosenberg
Exported from Wikisource on 05/20/20
HOME-THOUGHTS FROM FRANCE
Wan, fragile faces of joy,
Pitiful mouths that strive
To light with smiles the place
We dream we walk alive,
To you I stretch my hands,
Hands shut in pitiless trance
In a land of ruin and woe,
The desolate land of France.
Dear faces startled and shaken,
Out of wild dust and sounds
You yearn to me, lure and sadden
My heart with futile bounds.
About this digital edition
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Poems by Isaac Rosenberg — The Immortals
Isaac Rosenberg
Exported from Wikisource on 05/20/20
THE IMMORTALS
I killed them, but they would not die.
Yea, all the day and all the night
For them I could not rest nor sleep,
Nor guard from them nor hide in flight!
Then in my agony I turned
And made my hands red in their gore.
In vain—for faster than I slew
They rose more cruel than before.
I killed and killed with slaughter mad;
I killed till all my strength was gone;
And still they rose to torture me,
For Devils only die for fun.
I used to think the Devil hid
In women's smiles and wine's carouse;
I called him Satan, Balzebub;
But now I call him dirty louse.
About this digital edition
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Poems by Isaac Rosenberg — Louse Hunting
Isaac Rosenberg
Exported from Wikisource on 05/20/20
LOUSE HUNTING
Nudes, stark and glistening,
Yelling in lurid glee. Grinning faces
And raging limbs
Whirl over the floor one fire;
For a shirt verminously busy
Yon soldier tore from his throat
With oaths
Godhead might shrink at, but not the lice,
And soon the shirt was aflare
Over the candle he'd lit while we lay.
Then we all sprang up and stript
To hunt the verminous brood.
Soon like a demons' pantomime
This plunge was raging.
See the silhouettes agape,
See the gibbering shadows
Mixed with the baffled arms on the wall.
See Gargantuan hooked fingers
Pluck in supreme flesh
To smutch supreme littleness.
See the merry limbs in that Highland fling
Because some wizard vermin willed
To charm from the quiet this revel
When our ears were half lulled
By the dark music
Blown from Sleep's trumpet.
About this digital edition
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We distribute our books for free, starting from works not copyrighted or published under a free license. You are free to use our e-books for any purpose (including commercial exploitation), under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported[2] license or, at your choice, those of the GNU FDL[3].
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