Freepedia is a series of free encyclopaedias. We currently specialize in history but we intend to branch out into other areas. This section is about Isaac Rosenberg.

Isaac Rosenberg, the son of Jewish immigrants, was born in Bristol on 25th November 1890. Seven years later the family moved to London. After being educated in East End council schools, Rosenberg left at fourteen and became an apprentice engraver.

With the help of a wealthy woman friend, Lily Joseph, Rosenberg was able to study art at the Slade School. As well as painting, Rosenberg also wrote poetry. Suffering from poor health, Rosenberg emigrated to the warmer climate of South Africa. In Cape Town he lectured on art, painted portraits and had some of his poems published in South African magazines.

Rosenberg missed London and in February 1915 returned to England. He published a collection of poems, Youth, but was deeply upset when he discovered that only ten copies of his book had been sold. In October 1915 Rosenberg joined the Bantams, a special battalion for men too short to be accepted into other regiments.

Sent to the Somme in France, Rosenberg was on the Western Front for the next two years. Isaac Rosenberg was killed on 1st April, 1918. His body was never recovered but friends arranged for his poems, Collected Works to be published in 1922.

 

Isaac Rosenberg

sIsaac Rosenberg: Family Records

Isaac Rosenberg: Poem Hunter

Wikipedia: Isaac Rosenberg

Isaac Rosenberg: Spartacus Biography

 

 

Forum Debates

The War Poets

Isaac Rosenberg

 

 

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(1) Isaac Rosenberg, In The Trenches (1916)

I snatched two poppies
From the parapet’s ledge,
Two bright red poppies
That winked on the ledge.
Behind my ear
I stuck one through,
One blood red poppy
I gave to you.

The sandbags narrowed
And screwed out our jest,
And tore the poppy
You had on your breast ...
Down - a shell - O! Christ,
I am choked ... safe ... dust blind, I
See trench floor poppies
Strewn. Smashed you lie.

 

(2) Isaac Rosenberg, Break of Day in the Trenches (1916)

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.
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.

 

(3) Isaac Rosenberg, Returning, We Hear The Larks (1917)

Sombre the night is.
And though we have our lives, we know
What sinister threat lies 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 our upturned list’ning 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.

 

(4) Isaac Rosenberg, The Immortals (1918)

I killed them, but they would not die.
Yea! all the day and all the night
For them I could not rest or 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 in 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.