Danielle's WWI Poetry Blog

                Edgell Rickword                  Moonrise Over Battlefield by Edgell Rickword After the fallen sun the wind was sad  like violins behind immense old walls.  Trees were musicians swaying round the bed  of a woman m gloomy halls.  In privacy of music she made ready  with comb and silver dust and fard;  under her silken vest her little belly  shone like a bladder of sweet lard.  She drifted with the grand air of a punk on Heaven's streets soliciting white saints; then lay in bright communion on a cloud-bank as one who near extreme of pleasure faints.   Then I thought, standing in the ruined trench, (all around, dead Boche white-shirted lay like sheep), 'Why does this damned entrancing bitch seek lovers only among them that sleep?                     When I first read...

Isaac Rosenberg's self portrait On Receiving the First News of the War  by Isaac Rosenberg 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. While many World War I poets describe the horrors of battle and the weariness of a seemingly endless war, Isaac Rosenberg’s poem, “On Receiving the First News of the War”, anticipates the tragedy of war. Isaac Rosenberg grew up in extreme poverty when his family moved from Russia to London’s Jewish ghetto. Rosenberg became interested in painting and through awards and a sponsorship he was able to attend a school for painting where his inter...