Break of Day in the Trenches

Isaac Rosenberg 1890 (Bristol) – 1918 (Somme)



The darkness crumbles away
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
As I pull the parapet's poppy
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies,
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,
Less chanced than you for life,
Bonds to the whims of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.
What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurled through still heavens?
What quaver -what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in men's veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe,
Just a little white with the dust.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

49 sec read
110

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCDEFGHCIBJKLMBNOPQRSTUVW
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 861
Words 164
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 26

Isaac Rosenberg

Isaac Rosenberg was an English poet of the First World War. more…

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