War through the poems of Isaac Rosenberg

We can see war face-to-face through the poems of Isaac Rosenberg. The young man never returned, but his poems survived in "Poems from Camp and Trench". 

He wrote about the killings.


They knocked a soldier on the head,

I mourn the poet who fell dead.

And yet I think it was by chance,

By oversight you died in France.


About the missing home.


Dear faces startled and shaken,

Out of wild dust and sounds

You yearn to me, lure and sadden

My heart with futile bounds.


About the dying soldier.


'Water!... Water!... Oh, water!

For one of England’s dying sons.'

'We cannot give you water,

Were all England in your breath.'

'Water!... Water!... Oh, water!'

He moaned and swooned to death.


About final moments.


So we crashed round the bend,

We heard his weak scream,

We heard his very last sound,

And our wheels grazed his dead face.


About sacrifices.


Their blood is England’s heart;

By their dead hands

It is their noble part

That England stands.


Rosenberg met death in France in 1918. He was 27. 

His last poem was "Through These Pale Cold Days". It finishes with:

They leave these blond still days

In dust behind their tread

They see with living eyes

How long they have been dead.


Premonition? 

Isaac Rosenberg didn't like war but understood that sometimes there was no way around.
 

Nothing can justify war. I suppose we must all fight to get the trouble over.

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