Don Juans Song
The moon is in an ecstasy,
It wanes not nor can grow ;
The heavens are in a mist of love,
And deepest knowledge know :
What things in nature seem to move
Bear love as I bear love ?
And bear my pleasures so?
I bear my love as streams that bear
The sky still flow or shake :
Though deep within, too far on high.
Light blossoms kiss and wake
The waters sooner than the sky ;
And if they kiss and (lie
God made them frail to break.
poem by Isaac Rosenberg
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A Girls Thoughts
Dim apprehension of a trust
Comes over me this quiet hour,
As though the silence were a flower,
And this, its perfume, dark like dust.
My individual self would cling
Through fear, through pride, unto its fears :
It strives to shut out what it hears,
The founts of being murmuring.
0 ! Need, whose hauntings terrorize;
Whether my maiden ways would hide,
Or lose and to that need subside,
Life shrinks and instinct dreads surprise.
poem by Isaac Rosenberg
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Marching (As Seen From the Left File)
My eyes catch ruddy necks
Sturdily pressed back -
All a red brick moving glint.
Like flaming pendulums, hands
Swing across the khaki -
Mustard-coloured khaki -
To the automatic feet.
We husband the ancient glory
In these bared necks and hands.
Not broke is the forge of Mars;
But a subtler brain beats iron
To shoe the hoofs of death,
(Who paws dynamic air now).
Blind fingers loose an iron cloud
To rain immortal darkness
On strong eyes.
poem by Isaac Rosenberg
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O, In A World Of Men And Women
0, in a world of men and women,
Where all things seemed so strange to me,
And speech the common world called human
For me was a vain mimicry,
I thought-O, am I one in sorrow ?
Or is the world more quick to hide
Their pain with raiment that they borrow
From pleasure in the house of pride ?
O joy of mine, 0 longed-for stranger,
How I would greet you if you came:
In the world's joys I've been a ranger,
In my world sorrow is their name.
poem by Isaac Rosenberg
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The Burning Of The Temple
Fierce wrath of Solomon,
Where sleepest thou ?
0 see, The fabric which thou won
Earth and ocean to give thee-
0 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.
poem by Isaac Rosenberg
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The One Lost
I mingle with your bones:
You steal in subtle noose
This lighted dust .Jehovah loans
And now I lose.
What will the Lender say
When I shall not be found,
Safe-sheltered at the Judgment Day,
Being in you bound ?
he'll hunt through wards of Heaven,
Call to uncoffined earth
'Where is this soul, unjudged, not given
Dole for good's dearth?'
And I, lying so safe
Within you, hearing all,
To have cheated God shall laugh,
Freed by your thrall.
poem by Isaac Rosenberg
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The Blind God
Streaked with immortal blasphemies,
Betwixt His twin eternities
The Shaper of mortal destinies
Sits in that limbo of dreamless sleep,
Some nothing that hath shadows deep.
The world is only a small pool
In the meadows of Eternity,
And men like fishes lying cool ;
And the wise man and the fool
In its depths like fishes lie.
When an angel drops a rod
And he draws you to the sky
Will you bear to meet your God
You have streaked with blasphemy ?
poem by Isaac Rosenberg
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Soldier: Twentieth Century
I love you, great new Titan!
Am I not you?
Napoleon or Caesar
Out of you grew.
Out of the unthinkable torture,
Eyes kissed by death,
Won back to the world again,
Lost and won in a breath,
Cruel men are made immortal,
Out of your pain born.
They have stolen the sun’s power
With their feet on your shoulders worn.
Let them shrink from your girth,
That has outgrown the pallid days,
When you slept like Circe’s swine,
Or a word in the brain’s way.
poem by Isaac Rosenberg
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In The Underworld
I have lived in the underworld so long:
How can you, a creature of light,
Without terror understand the song
And unmoved hear what moves in night?
I am a spirit that yours has found,
Strange, undelightful, obscure,
Created by some other God, and bound
In terrible darkness, breathing breath impure.
Creature of light and happiness,
Deeper the darkness was when you,
With your bright terror eddying the distress,
Grazed the dark waves and shivering further flew.
poem by Isaac Rosenberg
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On Receiving News of the War
Snow is a strange white word.
No ice or frost
Has asked of bud or bird
For Winter's cost.
Yet ice and frost and snow
From earth to sky
This Summer land doth know.
No man knows why.
In all men's hearts it is.
Some spirit old
Hath turned with malign kiss
Our lives to mould.
Red fangs have torn His face.
God's blood is shed.
He mourns from His lone place
His children dead.
[...] Read more
poem by Isaac Rosenberg
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