Of Any Old Man

Wreck not the ageing heart of quietness,
With alien uproar and rude jolly cries,
Which satyr like to a mild maidens pride,
Ripens not wisdom, but a large recoil,
Give them their withered peace, their trial grave,
Their old youth's three-scored shadowy effigy,
Mock them not with your ripened turbulence,
Their frost mailed petulance with your torrid wrath,
While edging your boisterous thunder shivers one word,
Pap to their senile shivering, drug to truth,
The feigned ramparts of bleak ignorance,
Experience - crown of naked majesties,
That tells us nought we know not - but confirms,
Oh think! You reverend shadowy austere,
Your Christ's youth was not ended when he died.

poem by Isaac Rosenberg
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Expression

Call-call--and bruise the air :
Shatter dumb space!
Yea! We will ding this passion everywhere ;
Leaving no place

For the superb and grave
Magnificent throng,
The pregnant queens of quietness that brave
And edge our song

Of wonder at the light
(Our life-leased home),
Of greeting to our housemates.
And in might Our song shall roam

Life's heart, a blossoming fire
Blown bright by thought,
While gleams and fades the infinite desire,
Phantasmed naught.

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poem by Isaac Rosenberg
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Spring, 1916

Slow, rigid, is this masquerade
That passes as through a difficult air :
Heavily-heavily passes.
What has she fed on ? Who her table laid
Through the three seasons ? What forbidden fare
Ruined her as a mortal lass is ?

I played with her two years ago,
Who might be now her own sister in stone;
So altered from her May mien,
When round the pink a necklace of warm snow
Laughed to her throat where my mouth's touch had gone.
How is this, ruined Queen?

Who lured her vivid beauty so
'l'o be that strained chill thing that moves
So ghastly midst her young brood
Of pregnant shoots that she for men did grow ?
Where are the strong men who made these their loves ?
Spring ! God pity your mood !

poem by Isaac Rosenberg
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Chagrin

Caught still as Absalom,
Surely the air hangs
From the swayless cloud-boughs
Like hair of Absalom

Caught and hanging still.
From the imagined weight
Of spaces in a sky
Of mute chagrin my thoughts
Hang like branch-clung hair
To trunks of silence swung,
With the choked soul weighing down
Into thick emptiness.
Christ, end this hanging death,
For endlessness hangs therefrom !

Invisibly branches break
From invisible trees:
The cloud-woods where we rush
(Our eyes holding so much),

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poem by Isaac Rosenberg
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Hearts First Word. II

And all her soft dark hair
Breathed for him like a prayer,
And her white lost face
Was prisoned to sonie far place.
Love was not denied-
Love's ends would hide,
And Hower and fruit and tree
Were under its sea.
Yea, its abundance knelt
Where the nerves felt
The springs of feeling flow
And made pain grow !
There seemed no root or sky,
But a pent infinity
Where apparitions dim
Sculptured each whim
In dame and wandering mist
Of kisses to be kist.

LADY, YOU ARE MY GOD

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poem by Isaac Rosenberg
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Sleep

Godhead's lip hangs
When our pulses have no golden tremors,
And his whips are flicked by mice
And all star-amorous things.

Drops, drops of shivering quiet
Filter under my lids.
Now only am I powerful.
What though the cunning gods outwit us here
In daytime and in playtime,
Surely they feel the gyres we lay on them
In our sleep.

0, subtle gods lying hidden!
0, gods with your oblique eyes !
Your elbows in the dawn, and wrists
Bright with the afternoon,
1)o you not shake when a mortal slides
Into your own unvexed peace ?

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poem by Isaac Rosenberg
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Ah, Koelue

Ah, Koelue!
Had you embalmed your beauty, so
It could not backward go,
Or change in any way,
What were the use, if on my eyes
The embalming spices were not laid
To keep us fixed,
Two amorous sculptures passioned endlessly?
What were the use, if my sight grew,
And its far branches were cloud-hung,
You small at the roots, like grass,
While the new lips my spirit would kiss
Were not red lips of flesh,
But the huge kiss of power?
Where yesterday soft hair through my fingers fell,
A shaggy mane would entwine,
And no slim form work fire to my thighs,
But human Life's inarticulate mass
Throb the pulse of a thing
Whose mountain flanks awry

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poem by Isaac Rosenberg
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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' pantomine
The place was raging.
See the silhouettes agape,
See the glibbering shadows
Mixed with the battled arms on the wall.
See gargantuan hooked fingers
Pluck in supreme flesh
To smutch supreme littleness.

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poem by Isaac Rosenberg
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Girl To A Soldier On leave

Girl To A Soldier On Leave
Love! You love me — your eyes
Have looked through death at mine.
You have tempted a grave too much
I let you — I repine.

I love you - Titan lover,
My own storm-days Titan.
Greater than the son of Zeus,
I know whom I would choose.

Titan — my splendid rebel —
The old Prometheus
Wanes like a ghost before your power —
His pangs were joys to yours.

Pallid days arid and wan
Tied your soul fast.
Babel-cities smoky tops
Pressed upon your growth

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poem by Isaac Rosenberg
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Hearts First Word. I.

To sweeten a swift minute so
With such rare fragrance of sweet speech,
And make the after hours go
In a blank yearning each on each ;
To drain the springs till they be dry,
And then in anguish thirst for drink ;
So but to glimpse her robe thirst I,
And my soul hungers and I sink.

There is no word that we have said
Whereby the lips and heart arc fire;
No look the linked glances read
That held the springs of deep desire.
And yet the sounds her glad lips gave
Are on my soul vibrating still ;
Her eyes that swept me as a wave
Shine my soul's worship to fulfil.

Her hair, her eyes, her throat and chin-
Sweet hair, sweet eyes, sweet throat, so sweet,

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poem by Isaac Rosenberg
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