Poetry
Poems
Isaac Rosenberg · 1922
Opening lines
Messenger
Pharaoh’s desires.
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
The volume opens with a piece in verse, then brings together some twenty poems written in camp and at the front, and poems from before the war. At dawn, a soldier picks the poppy from the parapet; a rat jumps onto his hand and will doubtless pass over to the enemy. Men delouse their shirts by candlelight. Teams loaded with barbed wire go up towards the lines, and their wheels pass over the dead. Back in camp at night, soldiers hear unseen larks singing. A young girl talks to her soldier on leave.
Context
The collection appeared in 1922, four years after its author's death, selected and edited by Gordon Bottomley and preceded by a memoir by Laurence Binyon. It brings together a piece on Moses, the war poems, and some forty pieces from before the war, many of which came from two pamphlets published in 1912 and 1915. He served two years in France as a private soldier, and his verses show vermin, fatigue duty and waiting rather than command. His complete works appeared in 1937, with a preface by Siegfried Sassoon.
Who it is for
A slim volume; in French, only a bilingual selection of his war poems, published in 2018.
Prizes and reception
Since 1985 his name has been among the sixteen poets of the Great War commemorated in Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey.
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