Complete Works of Isaac Rosenberg
Page 12
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