The world throws up many wonderful and wondrous souls over and
over again, but none so wonderful and wondrous as Isaac Rosenberg (1890 - 1918)
who was sadly killed at the age of 27 as he and others were returning to their
trenches, having just finished night patrol. Rosenberg was the least privileged
of the British poets as he was born into a poor working-class Jewish family
that had emigrated from Russia. His economic circumstances militated
against his attending either Cambridge or Oxford. However, he was a talented
artist as well as a great poet, whom both Eliot and Pound acknowledged as a
good modernist poet - great praise indeed. Had he lived he would have
matched them with work equally as good as theirs. Alas that was not to
be. Too many young men were killed during the Great War - "half the
seed of Europe one by one" as Wilfred Owen, another First World War poet
would put it. As a talented artist, the young Rosenberg enrolled in evening
classes in the Art School at Birkbeck College, London University. Indeed, he
had hoped to make his living as a portrait artist and had moved to South Africa
to pursue that career when war broke out. Like most young men of his time he
would have felt he was abandoning his native homeland were he not to return to
England and enlist. He was no sympathizer with the war at all - he simply felt
duty-bound like many a young man of his era. He was to write in a letter
to a friend that "I never joined the army for patriotic reasons.
Nothing can justify war. I suppose we must all fight to get the
trouble over." Commentators are united in their view that the voice
of a modernist poet can be heard in his poems.
Returning, We Hear the Larks
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.
It is somewhat ironic that it was when returning from such a patrol the the young artist and poet, Isaac Rosenberg was killed. "And though we have our lives, we know //What sinister threat lies there" are words sombre indeed as the night. The opening imagery is clear and stark: "dragging anguished limbs," "poison-blasted tracks," and then the wonder of hearing a little joyous song breaks the sombre tone with joyful aural images in the stanza
But
hark! joy - joy - strange joy.
Lo!
heights of night ringing with unseen larks.
Music
showering our upturned list’ning faces,
lines that obviously make more sense when read
aloud to get their full aural effect. And then, we are given the wondrous and
wonderful final stanza that is loaded with mystery and magic interwoven with
fear and dread. It is as if Rosenberg is taking the fear and awfulness created
in the first and second stanzas and the joy, beauty and exultation of the third
and combining them both into a rather eerily beautiful and shockingly scary
mixture in the final stanza. It is indeed eerie and scary that death can drop
from the dark sky just as easily as song, but that is the nature of war.
Then those wondrous and magical lines that suggest inevitable lostness
(blindman's dreams) on "sands," (not a very stable support) which are
right beside "dangerous tides" (being washed away to destruction.)
Then those juxtaposed opposites in "girl's dark hair" (love and
beauty) and the "ruin" that may lie there is hauntingly bleak. Finally,
then, even her kisses which should be sweet, may hide the serpent lurking deep
within. And so, to end, dear reader, let us reread and ponder the words
of the last stanza:
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.
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