Complete Works of Isaac Rosenberg

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by Isaac Rosenberg


  He lay, a bullying hulk, to crush them more.

  But when one, fearless, turned and clawed like bronze,

  Cringing was easy to blunt these stern paws,

  10 And he would weigh the heavier on those after.

  Who rests in God’s mean flattery now? Your wealth

  Is but his cunning to make death more hard.

  Your iron sinews take more pain in breaking.

  And he has made the market for your beauty

  15 Too poor to buy, although you die to sell.

  Only that he has never heard of sleep;

  And when the cats come out the rats are sly.

  Here we are safe till he slinks in at dawn.

  But he has gnawed a fibre from strange roots,

  20 And in the morning some pale wonder ceases.

  Things are not strange and strange things are forgetful.

  Ah! if the day were arid, somehow lost

  Out of us, but it is as hair of us,

  And only in the hush no wind stirs it.

  25 And in the light vague trouble lifts and breathes,

  And restlessness still shadows the lost ways.

  The fingers shut on voices that pass through,

  Where blind farewells are taken easily...

  Ah! this miasma of a rotting God!

  I DID NOT PLUCK AT ALL; OR, FIRST FRUIT

  I did not pluck at all,

  And I am sorry now.

  The garden is not barred,

  But the boughs are heavy with snow,

  The flake-blossoms thickly fall,

  And the hid roots sigh, ‘How long will our flowers be marred?’

  Strange as a bird were dumb,

  Strange as a hueless leaf,

  As one deaf hungers to hear

  Or gazes without belief,

  The fruit yearned ‘fingers, come’.

  O, shut hands, be empty another year.

  CHAGRIN

  Caught still as Absalom,

  Surely the air hangs

  From the swayless cloud-boughs,

  Like hair of Absalom

  5 Caught and hanging still.

  From the imagined weight

  Of spaces in a sky

  Of mute chagrin, my thoughts

  Hang like branch-clung hair

  10 To trunks of silence swung,

  With the choked soul weighing down

  Into thick emptiness.

  Christ! end this hanging death,

  For endlessness hangs therefrom.

  15 Invisibly — branches break

  From invisible trees —

  The cloud-woods where we rush,

  Our eyes holding so much,

  Which we must ride dim ages round

  20 Ere the hands (we dream) can touch,

  We ride, we ride, before the morning

  The secret roots of the sun to tread,

  And suddenly

  We are lifted of all we know

  25 And hang from implacable boughs.

  IN THE PARK

  Let me weave my fantasy

  Of this web like broken glass

  Gleaming through the fretted leaves

  In a quaint intricacy,

  Diamond tipping all the grass.

  Hearken as the spirit heaves

  Through the branches and the leaves

  In the shudder of their pulse.

  Delicate nature trembles so

  To a ruder nature’s touch,

  And of peace that these convulse

  They have little who should have much.

  Life is so.

  Let me carve my fantasy

  Of the fretwork of the leaves.

  Then spake I to the tree,

  ‘Were ye your own desire

  What is it ye would be?’

  Answered the tree to me,

  ‘I am my own desire

  I am what I would be.

  If ye were your desire

  Would ye lie under me,

  And see me as you see?’

  ‘I am my own desire

  While I lie under you,

  145 And that which I would be

  Desire will sing to you.’

  DESIRE SINGS OF IMMORTALITY

  ‘Mortals — ancient syllables

  Spoken of God’s mouth,

  Do spirits them chronicle

  So they be not lost?

  ‘Music, breathed ephemeral —

  Fragrant maid and child;

  Bellow, croak and droning —

  Age and cumbrous man.

  ‘Music that the croaking hears:

  Croak, to mate the music:

  Do Angels stand and throw their nets

  For you, from banks Eterne?

  ‘Surely the speech of God’s mouth

  Shall not be for naught!

  Music wrought of God’s passion

  Less than vanished dew?

  ‘As the sea through cloud to sea,

  Thought through deed to thought,

  Each returneth as they were,

  So man to God’s mouth?’

  WEDDED

  The knotted moment that untwists

  Into the narrow laws of love,

  Its ends are rolled round our four wrists

  That once could stretch and rove.

  See our confined fingers stray

  O’er delicate fibres that recoil,

  And blushing hints as cold as clay;

  Love is tired after toil.

  But hush! two twin moods meet in air;

  Two spirits of one gendered thought.

  Our chained hands loosened everywhere

  Kindness like death’s have caught.

  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

  5 Swing across the khaki —

  Mustard-coloured khaki —

  To the automatic feet.

  We husband the ancient glory

  In these bared necks and hands,

  10 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

  15 To rain immortal darkness

  On strong eyes.

  SLEEP

  Godhead’s lip hangs

  When our pulses have no golden tremours,

  And his whips are flicked by mice

  And all star-amorous things.

  5 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,

  10 Surely they feel the gyves we lay on them

  In our sleep.

  O, subtle gods lying hidden!

  O, gods with your oblique eyes!

  Your elbows in the dawn, and wrists

  15 Bright with the afternoon,

  Do you not shake when a mortal slides

  Into your own unvexed peace?

  When a moving stillness breaks over your knees

  (An emanation of piled aeons’ pressure)

  20 From our bodies flat and straight,

  And your limbs are locked,

  Futilely gods’,

  And shut your sinister essences?

  HEART’S FIRST WORD

  And all her soft dark hair,

  Breathed for him like a prayer.

  And her white lost face,

  Was prisoned to some far place.

  Love was not denied —

  Love’s ends would hide.

  And flower 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 flame and wandering mist

  Of kisses to be kist.

  UNPUBLISHED POEMS

  CONTENTS

  ODE TO DAVID’S HARP

  ZION

  DAWN BEHIND NIGHT

  A BALLAD OF WHITECHAPEL

  A BALLAD OF TIME, LIFE AND MEMORY

  DEATH

  THE DEAD PAST

  IN THE HEART OF THE FOREST

  MY DAYS

  THE WORLD RUMBLES BY ME

  TO MR. AND MRS. LOWY, ON THEIR SILVER WEDDING

  LINES WRITTEN IN AN ALBUM TO J.L.

  GOD LOOKED CLEAR AT ME THROUGH HER EYES

  BIRTHDAY SONG

  THE PRESENT

  NOCTURNE

  THE KEY OF THE GATES OF HEAVEN

  THE CAGE

  BACCHANAL

  NOW THE SPIRIT’S SONG HAS WITHERED

  SO INNOCENT YOU SPREAD YOUR NET

  THE NUN

  WE ARE SAD WITH A VAGUE SWEET SORROW

  PEACE

  FLEET STREET

  THE GARDEN OF JOY

  THE POET

  MY SONGS

  TO NATURE

  DON JUAN’S SONG

  YOU AND I

  LOVE TO BE

  LIKE SOME FAIR SUBTLE POISON

  TWILIGHT I.

  AS WE LOOK

  EVEN NOW YOUR EYES ARE MIXED IN MINE

  PSYCHE’S LAMENT

  KNOWLEDGE

  RAPHAEL

  O’ER THE CELESTIAL PATHWAYS

  DUST CALLETH TO DUST

  TO MICHAEL SHERBROOKE ON HEARING HIS RECITATION OF ‘THE RAVEN’

  TWILIGHT II.

  AS A BESIEGED CITY

  CREATION

  GLORY OF HUELESS SKIES

  A QUESTION

  APPARITION

  A CARELESS HEART

  THE POET II

  THE BLIND GOD

  WALK YOU IN MUSIC, LIGHT OR NIGHT

  TWILIGHT III

  O, BE THESE MEN AND WOMEN

  A WARM THOUGHT FLICKERS

  SONG

  SPRING

  ON A LADY SINGING

  AS A SWORD IN THE SUN

  AT SEA-POINT

  O HEART, HOME OF HIGH PURPOSES

  OF ANY OLD MAN

  INVISIBLE ANCIENT ENEMY OF MINE

  AT NIGHT

  SUBJECTIVITY

  WISTFULLY IN PALLID SPLENDOUR

  HAVE WE SAILED AND HAVE WE WANDERED

  FAR AWAY

  GIRL’S SONG

  I KNOW YOU GOLDEN

  SACRED, VOLUPTUOUS HOLLOWS DEEP

  THE EXILE

  MY SOUL IS ROBBED

  NIGHT

  WHAT IF I WEAR YOUR BEAUTY

  DAWN

  UNDER THESE SKIES

  THE FEMALE GOD

  HER FABLED MOUTH

  A BIRD TRILLING ITS GAY HEART OUT

  SUMMER’S LIPS ARE AGLOW

  I HAVE LIVED IN THE UNDERWORLD TOO LONG

  I AM THE BLOOD

  BEAUTY I

  BEAUTY II

  AUGURIES

  ON RECEIVING NEWS OF THE WAR

  THE FLEA

  A WOMAN’S BEAUTY

  BUT I AM THROWN WITH BEAUTY’S BREATH

  IN HALF DELIGHT OF SHY DELIGHT

  PAST DAYS ARE HIEROGLYPHS

  WHO LOSES THE HOUR OF THE WIND?

  DUSK AND THE MIRROR

  THE MIRROR

  SIGNIFICANCE

  WEDDED

  MIDSUMMER FROST II.

  SLEEP II.

  GREEN THOUGHTS ARE

  LUSITANIA

  THE TROOP SHIP

  AUGUST 1914

  THE JEW

  FROM FRANCE

  IN THE TRENCHES

  BREAK OF DAY IN THE TRENCHES

  HOME-THOUGHTS FROM FRANCE

  A WORM FED ON THE HEART OF CORINTH

  THE DYING SOLDIER

  IN WAR

  THE IMMORTALS

  LOUSE HUNTING

  RETURNING, WE HEAR THE LARKS

  DEAD MAN’S DUMP

  DAUGHTERS OF WAR

  SOLDIER: TWENTIETH CENTURY

  GIRL TO SOLDIER ON LEAVE

  THE BURNING OF THE TEMPLE

  THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM BY THE BABYLONIAN HORDES

  THROUGH THESE PALE COLD DAYS

  ODE TO DAVID’S HARP

  Awake! ye joyful strains, awake!

  In silence sleep no more;

  Disperse the gloom that ever lies

  O’er Judah’s barren shore.

  5 Where are the hands that strung thee

  With tender touch and true?

  Those hands are silenced too.

  The harp that faster caused to beat

  The heart that throbbed for war,

  10 The harp that melancholy calmed,

  Lies mute on Judah’s shore.

  One chord awake — one strain prolong

  To wake the zeal in Israel’s breast;

  Oh sacred lyre, once more, how long?

  15 ’Tis vain, alas! in silence rest.

  Many a minstrel fame’s elated

  Envies thee thy harp of fame,

  Harp of David — monarch minstrel,

  Bravely — bravely, keep thy name.

  20 Ay! every ear that listen’d,

  Was charmed — was thrilled — was bound.

  Every eye with moisture glisten’d

  Thrilling to the harp’s sweet sound.

  Hark! the harp is pouring

  25 Notes of burning fire,

  And each soul o’erpowering,

  Melts the rousing ire.

  Fiercer — shriller — wilder far

  Than the iron notes of war,

  30 Accents sweet and echoes sweeter,

  Minstrel — minstrel, steeds fly fleeter

  Spurred on by thy magic strains.

  Tell me not the harp lies sleeping,

  Set not thus my heart aweeping,

  35 In the muse’s fairy dwelling

  There thy magic notes are swelling.

  But for list’ning mortals’ ear

  Vainly wait, ye will not hear.

  So clearly sweet — so plaintive sad

  40 More tender tone no harper had.

  O! when again shall Israel see

  A harp so toned with melody?

  1905

  ZION

  She stood — a hill-ensceptred Queen,

  The glory streaming from her;

  While Heaven flashed her rays between,

  And shed eternal summer.

  5 The gates of morning opened wide

  On sunny dome and steeple.

  Noon gleamed upon the mountain-side

  Throng’d with a happy people.

  And twilight’s drowsy, half closed eyes

  10 Beheld that virgin splendour

  Whose orbs were as her darkening skies,

  And as her spirit, tender.

  Girt with that strength, first born of right,

  Held fast by deeds of honour,

  15 Her robe she wove with rays more bright

  Than Heaven could rain upon her.

  Where is that light — that citadel?

  That robe with woof of glory?

  She lost her virtue and she fell,

  20 And only left her story.

  1906

  DAWN BEHIND NIGHT

  Lips! bold, frenzied utterance, shape to the thoughts that are prompted by hate

  Of the red streaming burden of wrong we have borne and still bear;

  That wealth with its soul-crushing scourges placed into its hands by fate,

  Hath made the cement of its towers, grim-girdled by our despair.

  5 Should it die in the death that they make, in the silence that follows the sob;

  In the voiceless depth of the waters that closes upon our grief;

  Who shall know of the bl
eakness assigned us for the fruits that we reap and they rob?

  To pour out the strong wine of pity, outstretch the kind hand in relief.

  In the golden glare of the morning, in the solemn serene of the night,

  10 We look on each other’s faces, and we turn to our prison bar;

  In pitiless travail of toil and outside the precious light,

  What wonder we know not our manhood in the curse of the things that are?

  In the life or the death they dole us from the rags and the bones of their store,

  In the blood they feed but to drink of, in the pity they feign in their pride,

  15 Lies the glimpse of a heaven behind it, for the ship hath left the shore,

  That will find us and free us and take us where its portals are opened wide.

  1909

  A BALLAD OF WHITECHAPEL

  God’s mercy shines,

  And our full hearts must make record of this,

  For grief that burst from out its dark confines

  Into strange sunlit bliss.

  5 I stood where glowed

  The merry glare of golden whirring lights

  Above the monstrous mass that seethed and flowed

  Through one of London’s nights.

  I watched the gleams

  10 Of jagged warm lights on shrunk faces pale.

  I heard mad laughter as one hears in dreams,

  Or Hell’s harsh lurid tale.

  The traffic rolled,

  A gliding chaos populous of din.

  15 A steaming wail at doom the Lord had scrawled

  For perilous loads of sin.

  And my soul thought,

  ‘What fearful land have my steps wandered to?

  God’s love is everywhere, but here is naught

  20 Save love His anger slew.’

  And as I stood

  Lost in promiscuous bewilderment,

  Which to my mazed soul was wonder-food,

  A girl in garments rent

  25 Peered ‘neath lids shamed,

  And spoke to me and murmured to my blood.

  My soul stopped dead, and all my horror flamed

  At her forgot of God.

  Her hungered eyes,

  30 Craving and yet so sadly spiritual,

  Shone like the unsmirched corner of a jewel

  Where else foul blemish lies.

  I walked with her

  Because my heart thought, ‘Here the soul is clean,

  35 The fragrance of the frankincense and myrrh

  Is lost in odours mean.’

  She told me how

  The shadow of black death had newly come

  And touched her father, mother, even now

  40 Grim-hovering in her home,

  Where fevered lay

  Her wasting brother in a cold bleak room,

 

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