[Alan Seeger] [Charles Hamilton Sorley] [Edward Thomas] [Herbert Read] [Isaac Rosenberg] [John McCrae] [Rupert Brooke] [Siegfried Sassoon] [Wilfred Owen] [William Noel Hodgson]

Isaac Rosenberg (1890 - 1918)

ON RECEIVING NEWS OF THE WAR poem - Isaac Rosenberg

ON RECEIVING NEWS OF THE WAR

Snow is a strange white word.
No ice or frost
Has asked of bud or bird
For Winter's cost.

Yet ice and frost and snow
From earth to sky
This Summer land doth know.
No man knows why.

In all men's hearts it is.
Some spirit old
Hath turned with malign kiss
Our lives to mould.

Red fangs have torn His face.
God's blood is shed.
He mourns from His lone place
His children dead.

O! ancient crimson curse!
Corrode, consume.
Give back this universe
Its pristine bloom.

UK Buyers

Purchase the Book

Selected Poems and Letters (Hardcover)
by Isaac Rosenberg (Author)

Isaac Rosenberg has long been regarded as one of the most important artistic figures of the First World War. His poems, such as ‘Dead Man’s Dump’ and ‘Break of Day in the Trenches’, have been included in every significant war anthology and have earned him a place in Poets’ Corner. He studied at the Slade School of Art at the same time as Stanley Spencer and Mark Gertler, showing promise as a painter. His poverty, education and background made him an outsider, yet equipped him to cope with the unforeseen horror of war in the trenches: ‘I am determined that this war, with all its powers for devastation, shall not master my poeting.’

US Buyers

Other War Poets


John Mcrae	Wilfred Owen	Edward Thomas	Herbert Read	Isaac Rosenberg

William Hodgson	Siegfried Sassoon	Rupert Brooke	Alan Seeger	Charles Sorley