Isaac Rosenberg
1890 - 1918
August, 1914
What in our lives is burnt
In the fire of this?
The heart's dear granary?
The much we shall miss?
Three lives hath one life---
Iron, honey, gold.
The gold, the honey gone---
Left is the hard and cold.
Iron are our lives
Molten right through our youth.
A burnt space through ripe fields,
A fair mouth's broken tooth.
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Isaac Rosenberg was an English poet and writer. His WW1 Poems from the Trenches are considered to be some of the most outstanding poems of the war period. In 1916 he was sent with his battalion, The King's Own Lancaster Regiment to the Western Front.
He was killed on 1 April 1918.
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Thank you again Josie. I had never heard of this man. Clearly Jewish by name, and what a wonderful painting of him (wonder who did that). An odd, but very strong poem this one.
ReplyDeleteThanks Susan for pointing out my omission - this was a self portrait painted in 1915. Rosenberg was born into a Jewish family in Bristol.
DeleteThanks for looking.