Complete Works of Isaac Rosenberg

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Complete Works of Isaac Rosenberg Page 12

by Isaac Rosenberg


  1914

  BEAUTIFUL IS THE DAY

  Beautiful is the day,

  Sighs the beloved night.

  Why do you fly away

  When I come with my stars bright?

  Your gaudy disarray

  1914

  WOOD AND FOREST, DRINK

  Wood and forest, drink

  Of the blue delight,

  Only of its brink.

  But to my mind and sight

  Drink from brink to brink.

  I KNOW ALL MEN ARE WITHERED WITH YEARNING

  I know all men are withered with yearning —

  O forest flame, guarded with swords that are burning,

  O eyes that sea-like our madness entombs,

  Gold hair whose rich metal enlocks us in terror

  I HAVE HEARD THE GODS

  I have heard the Gods

  In their high conference

  As I lay outside the world

  Quiet in sleep

  TO J. KRAMER

  In the large manner and luxury

  Of a giant who guests

  In a little world of mortals,

  He condescends a space

  His ears to incline,

  But as though list’ning were a trouble.

  Who knows! but it were a hazard

  To break speech on this matter,

  To bid conference with a doctor!

  Mayhap cod-liver-oil

  Thrice in the day taken

  Medicinal might be.

  EVEN AS A LETTER BURNS AND CURLS

  Even as a letter burns and curls

  And the mind and heart in the writing blackens,

  Words that wane as the wind unfurls —

  Obliteration never slackens.

  Fate who wrote it and addressed it here,

  Life who read it, loved it, called it dear,

  Peace who slumbered, Love who tore it through.

  THE THRONGING GLORIES RINGING ROUND OUR BIRTH

  The thronging glories ringing round our birth,

  The angels worshipping, th’ adoring kings,

  The inspired presence,

  Surely the songs, the worship, and the burden

  Of light washes beneath the lidded slumber

  Of the shut soul.

  1914

  NATURE, INDEED, THE PLOT YOU SPIN’S SO STALE

  Nature, indeed, the plot you spin’s so stale,

  And each man’s story is so like another,

  I should advise — it’s such a boring tale,

  Suppress all copies and begin some other.

  FROM YOUR SUNNY CLIME

  From your sunny clime

  Dream of earthly time

  And the chill mist,

  Wonder at earth’s wreck

  And the sorrow-strewn deck,

  By death unkist.

  Sailing as for joy,

  Happy girl and boy,

  In these waters grim

  See their faces pale,

  The broken sail,

  For an idle whim.

  God’s dream, God’s whim.

  NOW THINK HOW HIGH A MOUNTAIN IS

  Now think how high a mountain is,

  Joy, could this tall oak’s branches kiss

  Its shoulder, less its brow, how blest?

  If I lie low the skies are drest

  With its broidered branches stretched across

  Into the sky-scorned mountain’s loss,

  The sky, it gibbers to forever.

  Nought is too low to make so high

  As hope, if we stand right, and sever

  Waste, the essential to descry.

  VIOLET IS THE MADDEST COLOR I KNOW

  Violet is the maddest color I know

  And opal is the color of dreams,

  But a girl is the color of snow,

  The violet like noon haze she seems

  And of opal the lights on her brow...

  DROWSED IN BEAUTY

  Drowsed in beauty

  Of her face

  Waking fancies

  Strive to chase.

  IN THE MOON’S DARK FANTASY

  In the moon’s dark fantasy

  Here is a woman weeping,

  Having the night for a palace.

  And here in a house of stone

  Harlots feast and revel.

  1914

  ALL PLEASURES FLY

  All pleasures fly,

  O clinging lights

  And wavering glory

  Adieu you sigh,

  Half-told your story,

  To you we die.

  AND LIKE THE ARTIST WHO CREATES

  And like the artist who creates

  From dying things what never dies...

  FOR ONE THRILLED INSTANT AM I YOU, O SKIES

  For one thrilled instant am I you, O skies.

  It passes, I am hunted, and the air

  Lives with revengeful momentary fires.

  O wilderness of heaven,

  5 Whose profound spaces like some God’s blank eyes

  Roll in a milky terror, move and move,

  While our fears make vague shuddering imprints there

  And character such chained-up forms of sorrow

  That a breath can unloose; in its white depths

  10 Dream unnamed gulfs of sudden traps for men.

  For all men’s thoughts go up and form one soul

  With unimagined might of evil scheming,

  Wrought by the texture of selfish desires,

  Of puny plotting, and inspired dreaming.

  15 Or if a thought like spray by sudden moon

  Is lit, that holy amorous instant knows

  Transplanted time to make twin time in space,

  My new born thought touch aeon-dusted thoughts.

  From softly lidded lights, from breaking gleams,

  20 Into a rainbow radiance, some pale light springs,

  And the dim Sun stands midwife to this child.

  THE SEARCH

  Dawn like a flushed rose petal fleck’d with gold

  Quickened youth’s glow. Upon my barb I leap’d

  While the blank desert’s stretched leaguers slept,

  And loosed his bridle of flame from idling cold.

  BE THE HOPE OR THE FEAR

  Be the hope or the fear,

  Be the smile or the tear,

  In the strife of a life

  On Time’s rolling river

  That rolls on forever.

  WILD UNDERTONES

  I wash my soul in colours, in a million undertones,

  And then my soul shines out — and you read — a poem.

  I HAVE PRESSED MY TEETH IN THE HEART OF MAY

  I have pressed my teeth in the heart of May,

  I have dabbled my lips in the honey of June,

  And the sun shot keen and the grass laughed gay

  And the earth was buoyed on the tide of noon.

  WHAT SONGS DO FILL THE PAUSES OF OUR DAY

  What songs do fill the pauses of our day

  When action tires and motion begs to stay

  And life can give to life a little heed?

  Then when life only seems to pause

  A life divine from heaven she draws,

  From labour’s earthly trammels freed.

  IN DIMPLED DEPTHS OF SMILING INNOCENCE

  In dimpled depths of smiling innocence,

  In dimpled labyrinths of innocence,

  My sunless sorrow made its rosy grave

  In laughing liquid eyes that Time had wardened.

  Fifteen skyey years, — my sad soul looked,

  My sad soul looked and all its sadness vanished.

  WHAT MAY BE, WHAT HATH BEEN, AND WHAT IS NOW?

  What may be, what hath been, and what is now?

  God. God! if thou art pity, look on me;

  God! if thou art forgiveness, turn and see

  The dark within, the anguish on my brow!

  O! wherefore am I stricken in grief thus low?

 
For no wrong done, or right undone to thee?

  For, if that thou has made me, what must be

  Thou hast made too. How canst thou be thy foe

  To retribute what thou thyself hast done?

  A little pity, or if that be vain,

  If tears are dumb since there to hear are none,

  If that the years mean lingering hours of pain,

  If rest alone through death’s gate is but won,

  THE GRASSES TREMBLE AND QUIVER

  The grasses tremble and quiver

  Now at the set of day

  The host of colours come

  In gorgeous disarray

  SUMMER IN WINTER SIX THOUGHTS

  Before the winter’s over

  I know a way

  The summer to recover,

  The August and the May.

  5 Before the month of blossoms

  And sunny days,

  I know that which unbosoms

  Whate’er the summer says.

  Ah! would you net the season?

  10 And chain the sun?

  For you will flowers do treason?

  And how is treason done?

  While still the land lies gleaming

  And bare and dumb,

  15 And love asleep is dreaming

  Of the warm nights to come,

  Catch these sweet thoughts in shadow,

  Bring them to light,

  At once the fragrant meadow

  20 Will flash on sense and sight.

  Six names of six sweet maidens,

  Six honey flowers,

  Name, and each name unladens

  Its load of summer hours.

  25 Ruth, joyous as a July

  Song-throbbing noon,

  And rosy as a newly

  Flushed eager rose in June.

  The August’s dreamy languor

  30 Is Maisy sweet.

  Drowsed summer when she’s sang her

  Rich songs and rests her feet.

  The stately smile and gracious

  Of an April wood

  35 Is tall and fair Gertrude.

  And like a clear May morning

  When birds call clear

  And quickly to each other,

  Is little Lily dear.

  40 And ripe as buxom Autumn

  When she holds hands

  With August, fruit enwroughten,

  Fair sumptuous Ethel stands.

  Sweet gleams of dawn and twilight,

  45 Sunshine in shade,

  Is Lena calm as starlight.

  Now the six thoughts are said.

  L — AND M —

  Once on a time in a land so fair

  That the air you breathed was as wine,

  And everything that you looked on there

  Made you at once divine,

  5 There lived two maidens, little and sweet,

  Whose dear names I may not tell

  Because they would call me blab and cheat,

  Which would be terrible.

  The eldest whom I will just call L,

  10 Was most ladylike and smart,

  And of M the youngest, she had ways that — well,

  One had to guard one’s heart.

  And in this land, as of course you’d guess,

  They did not live all alone,

  15 And all the blessings that God could bless

  These two could call their own.

  A mother, so wise and good and kind,

  A father as young as they

  In heart, who while he formed their mind,

  20 He did not mind their play.

  They were taught music, and painting, and all

  Of culture’s thousand pothers,

  To dance and to ply the bat and ball,

  And also feel for others.

  25 But sad to say, most sad it should be,

  They were not always good;

  Although they looked so fairily,

  They oft did what no fairy would.

  When they were set to drawing flowers

  30 Then Lily in pique would say,

  ‘I hate drawing, especially flowers,

  Let’s throw the flowers away’.

  And Maisy, that buxom rosy Miss,

  Would set the teacher riddles,

  35 And his brain with ‘Can you solve this and this?’

  Buzzed as if with a hundred fiddles.

  AMBER EYES WITH EVER SUCH LITTLE RED FIRES

  Amber eyes with ever such little red fires,

  Face as vague and white as a swan in shadow.

  FRAIL HOURS THAT LOVE TO DANCE

  Frail hours that love to dance

  To hear you princely sun,

  His golden countenance

  Scatters you pale and wan,

  Scatters your ghostly love

  That was the breath of a dream,

  Scatters light from above

  Till day flows like a stream.

  The stars fade in the sky

  Taking our dreams away,

  Day’s banners flame on high

  In gaudy disarray.

  THERE ARE SWEET CHAINS THAT BIND

  There are sweet chains that bind

  And gains that are strange loss.

  Your ruddy freedom falters

  And pales at hint of these.

  You change, bewilder and gleam

  In a labyrinth of light,

  But one change calls dark and dumbly

  To you and calls in vain.

  I LIVE FOR YOU

  ‘I live for you’, says Ted to Jane

  ‘And if you died, so I’d die too.’

  ‘I’m sure you would’ said working Jane

  ‘You live for me — to live for you.’

  TOM IS SO RESERVED AND QUIET

  Tom is so reserved and quiet

  Before he married was so blatant

  He finds his Prue

  Will talk enough for two.

  OVER THE CHASM THEY ROLLED TOGETHER

  Over the chasm they rolled together

  Chasm that lay in tumult of trance

  Blue is the sky and calm the Spring weather

  Careless of two who have ended their dance.

  BRITISH WOMEN! IN YOUR WOMBS YOU PLOTTED

  British women! in your wombs you plotted

  This monstrous girth of glory, this marvellous glory.

  Not for mere love delights God meant the profound hour

  When an Englishman was planned.

  Responsible hour! wherein God wrote anew

  His guarantee of the world’s surety

  Of honour, light and sweetness, all forgot

  Since men first marred the writ of Mary’s Son.

  1917

  EVENING

  My roses lioter, lips to press

  Of emerald winds

  Fall’n from sky chasms of sunset stress...

  Amongst their petals grope

  Displacing hands, and vapoured heliotrope.

  1915

  The Poems

  Cable Street, a poor district of the East End of London — Rosenberg’s family moved to 47 Cable Street in 1897.

  LIST OF POEMS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

  NIGHT AND DAY

  NIGHT

  DAY

  TO J. H. AMSCHEWITZ

  ASPIRATION

  HEART’S FIRST WORD

  WHEN I WENT FORTH

  IN NOVEMBER

  LADY, YOU ARE MY GOD

  SPIRITUAL ISOLATION

  TESS

  O! IN A WORLD OF MEN AND WOMEN

  PART I. FAITH AND FEAR.

  ASPIRATION

  IN THE PARK.

  DESIRE SINGS OF IMMORTALITY.

  NOON IN THE CITY

  NONE HAVE SEEN THE LORD OF THE HOUSE

  A GIRL’S THOUGHTS

  WEDDED.

  MIDSUMMER FROST

  PART II. THE CYNIC’S LAMP.

  LOVE AND LUST

  IN PICCADILLY

  A MOOD

  PART
III. CHANGE AND SUNFIRE.

  APRIL DAWN

  IF YOU ARE FIRE

  DIM-WATERY-LIGHTS, GLEAMING ON GIBBERING FACES

  BREAK IN BY SUBTLER WAYS

  LADY, YOU ARE MY GOD

  THE ONE LOST

  MY SOUL IS ROBBED

  GOD MADE BLIND

  THE DEAD HEROES

  THE CLOISTER

  EXPRESSION

  SPRING 1916

  GOD

  I DID NOT PLUCK AT ALL; OR, FIRST FRUIT

  CHAGRIN

  IN THE PARK

  DESIRE SINGS OF IMMORTALITY

  WEDDED

  MARCHING

  SLEEP

  HEART’S FIRST WORD

  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

 

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