Soldier: Twentieth Century

I love you, great new Titan! Am I not you? Napoleon and Caesar Out of you grew. Out of 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 ways.

Killed in Action

Your “Youth” 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.

Isaac Rosenberg

2018

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.

Isaac Rosenberg

2018

The Troop Ship

Grotesque and queerly huddled
Contortionists to twist
The sleepy soul to a sleep,
We lie all sorts of ways
And cannot sleep.
The wet wind is so cold,
And the lurching men so careless,
That, should you drop to a doze,
Winds’ fumble or men’s feet
Are on your face.

Isaac Rosenberg

2018

Poems

Soldier: Twentieth Century

More by this poet

Killed in Action

Marching

The Troop Ship

Poems

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Soldier: Twentieth Century

More by this poet

Killed in Action

Marching

The Troop Ship

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