Complete Works of Isaac Rosenberg Read online

  Isaac Rosenberg

  (1890-1918)

  Contents

  The Poetry Collections

  NIGHT AND DAY

  YOUTH

  MOSES

  UNPUBLISHED POEMS

  FRAGMENTS

  The Poems

  LIST OF POEMS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

  LIST OF POEMS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

  The Plays

  MOSES

  THE AMULET

  THE UNICORN

  ADAM

  The Letters

  INDEX OF LETTERS BY YEAR OF COMPOSITION

  The Paintings

  LIST OF PAINTINGS

  The Prose

  LIST OF PROSE WORKS

  The Delphi Classics Catalogue

  © Delphi Classics 2015

  Version 1

  Isaac Rosenberg

  By Delphi Classics, 2015

  COPYRIGHT

  Isaac Rosenberg - Delphi Poets Series

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2015 by Delphi Classics.

  © Delphi Classics, 2015.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

  Delphi Classics

  is an imprint of

  Delphi Publishing Ltd

  Hastings, East Sussex

  United Kingdom

  Contact: [email protected]

  www.delphiclassics.com

  NOTE

  When reading poetry on an eReader, it is advisable to use a small font size and landscape mode, which will allow the lines of poetry to display correctly.

  Also available:

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  For the first time in publishing history, readers can explore all the poems, rare fragments and the poets’ letters.

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  The Poetry Collections

  Bristol, South West England — Rosenberg’s birthplace

  Sights around Bristol, 1873

  NIGHT AND DAY

  Isaac Rosenberg was born in Bristol, the second of six children and eldest son of his parents, Barnett (formerly Dovber) and Hacha Rosenberg, who were Orthodox Jews from Dvinsk (now in Latvia). In 1897, the Rosenberg family moved to Cable Street, then a poor district of the East End of London, featuring a strong Jewish community. Rosenberg attended St. Paul’s School Whitechapel around the corner in Wellclose Square, until his family moved to Stepney in 1900, allowing him to experience Jewish schooling at the Baker Street School. Having shown an early interest in art, he left school at the age of fourteen and became an apprentice at a firm of engravers in Fleet Street.

  However, the young Rosenberg was also interested in poetry, attending lectures in both literature and the arts. He completed his apprenticeship in 1911, and managed to find the finances to attend the Slade School of Fine Art at University College, London (UCL). He was taken up by Laurence Binyon and Edward Marsh, and began to write poetry seriously, in spite of often suffering from ill-health. In 1912, he published a pamphlet of ten poems, with the title Night and Day. Due to the development of his poetry, in time he would come to think of himself as a poet first and a painter second.

  Self-portrait, c. 1910

  CONTENTS

  NIGHT AND DAY

  NIGHT

  DAY

  TO J. H. AMSCHEWITZ

  ASPIRATION

  HEART’S FIRST WORD

  WHEN I WENT FORTH

  IN NOVEMBER

  LADY, YOU ARE MY GOD

  SPIRITUAL ISOLATION

  TESS

  O! IN A WORLD OF MEN AND WOMEN

  Laurence Binyon (1869-1943) was a poet, dramatist and art scholar, who helped Rosenberg with his early poetic ventures.

  NIGHT AND DAY

  ARGUMENT

  NIGHT. The Poet wanders through the night and questions of

  the stars but receives no answer. He walks through the crowds

  of the streets, and asks himself whether he is the scapegoat

  to bear the sins of humanity upon himself, and to waste his

  5 life to discover the secret of God, for all.

  DAY. He wakes, and sees the day through his window. He feels

  endowed with a larger capacity to feel and enjoy things, and

  knows that by having communed with the stars, his soul has

  exalted itself, and become wiser in intellectual experience,

  10 He walks through the city, out into the woods, and lies under

  the trees, dreaming through the sky-spaces.

  He hears Desire sing a song of Immortality,

  Hope, a song of love,

  And Beauty, a song of the Eternal rhythm.

  15 Twilight comes down and the poet hearkens to the song of the

  evening star; for Beauty has taught him to hear, Hope to feel,

  and Desire, a conception of attainment.

  By thinking of higher things we exalt ourselves to what we think about.

  Striving after the perfect — God, we attain nearer to

  perfection than before.

  NIGHT

  When the night is warm with wings

  Invisible, articulate,

  Only the wind sings

  To our mortal ears of fault.

  5 And the steadfast eyes of fate

  Gleam from Heaven’s brooding vault,

  Through dull corporeal bars

  We drink in the proud stars.

  These, my earth-sundered fantasy

  10 On pillared heights of thought doth see

  In the dark heaven as golden pendulous birds,

  Whose tremulous wings the wind translates to words,

  From the thrilled heaven which is their rapturous nest.

  Still, though they sleep not, thoughtful to illume,

  15 They are not silent, only our sundering gloom

  Makes their songs dumb to us — a tragic jest.

  Sing to me, for my soul’s eyes

  Anguish for those ecstasies

  And voluptuous mysteries

  20 That must somewhere be,

  Or we could not know of them.

  Sing to me, O sing to me,

  Is your light from sun of them,

  Or from boughs of golden stem

  25 Trickling over ye,

  That your nest is hanging on?

  Though the sun’s face be on high,

  Yet his fiery feet do lie

  Fixed on earth, to give the sky

  30 In our hands a while.

  So our mortal hearts make bliss,

  And we may a little smile.

  Wherefore keep ye all your bliss?

  What your gain for gain we miss?

  35 Wherefore so beguile

  With your shining, heard of none?

  How can I burst this trammel of my flesh,

  That is a continent ‘twixt your song and me?

  How can I loosen from my soul this mesh

  40 That dulls mine ears and blinds mine eyes to see?

  When I had clambered over the walls of night,

  Lo! still the night lay unperturbed behind.

  Only in Heaven the starry birds of light

  Swarmed as arrested in their showery flight.

  45 O! could I bind your song as night can bind.

  Sudden the night blazed open at my feet.

  Like splintered crystal tangled with gold dust

  Blared on my ear and eye the populous street.

  Then, like a dark globe sprinkled with gold heat

 
; 50 Wherein dark waters move — dark gleaming seas,

  So round the lit-faced shadows seemed the street.

  They feel the skeleton rattle as they go.

  ‘Let us forget’, they cry, ‘soon we shall know, —

  Drown in life’s carnival fate’s whisperings.’

  55 Foul heat of painted faces, ribald breath,

  Lewd leer, make up the pageant as they flow

  In reeking passage to the house of death.

  Then said I, what divides love’s name from lust?

  Behold, what word can name the life for these?

  60 For starven and not hungered, O! what crust?

  Lean — starven, and they hunger not increase.

  Starven of light, barriered ‘gainst purity,

  A bruten lust of living their life’s lease.

  A dream-empearled ladder to the moon,

  65 A thought enguarded heavenly embassy

  To treat with God for a perpetual June,

  Colours my youth’s flower for them, for me.

  One flower whose ardent fragrance wastes for all.

  Fed with the sobbings of humanity.

  70 The sobbing of the burden of their sins

  Is all the guerdon strife to ease them wins.

  Who seeks heaven’s sign, earth’s scapegoat must he be?

  God gives no June, and Heaven is as a wall.

  No symboled answer to my questionings —

  75 Only the weak wind yearns, the stars wink not at all.

  DAY

  The fiery hoofs of day have trampled the night to dust;

  They have broken the censer of darkness and its fumes are lost in light.

  Like a smoke blown away by the rushing of the gust

  When the doors of the sun flung open, morning leaped and smote the night.

  5 The banners of the day flame from the east.

  Its gorgeous hosts assail the heart of dreams.

  They brush aside the strange and cowled priest

  Who ministers to our pillows with moonbeams

  And restful pageantry or lethe draught,

  10 Sleep — who by day dwells in invisibleness —

  Their noising stirs the waking veils of thought,

  Ah! I am in the midst of their bright press.

  I went to sleep in the night,

  In the awed and shadowy night,

  15 Pleading of those birds delight.

  Where has the morning borne me to?

  What has she done with the night?

  And those birds flown whereto?

  Surely some God hath breathed upon mine eyes

  20 Between awake and waking, or poured strange wine

  Of some large knowledge — for I am grown wise

  And big with new life — eager and divine.

  Last night I stripped my soul of all alloy

  Of earth that did ensphere and fetter it.

  25 I strove to touch the springs of all the night.

  My brow felt spray, but hands and eyes were dry.

  Last night my soul thought God — my soul felt God.

  I prayed the stars this for my body’s dole.

  Through prayer and thought to purified desires.

  30 Through hallowed thought I was made half divine.

  Shall I dream of shadow

  Now I have the light;

  Spoil the sunny meadow

  To think of night?

  35 Forth into the woods I will fare.

  I will walk through the great clanging city

  To seek what all have sought to find.

  No face shall pass me

  But I will question therein

  40 Some mirrored subtlety,

  Some wandering gleam that straggled through

  Nativity, from the forgotten shelter of God’s skirts.

  In all that Time has harvested,

  Whether a seed from Heaven has sprung;

  45 In all God has made mutable and swift

  Some lustre of his smile to see.

  And the dun monstrous buildings be a book

  To read the malediction of lucre

  That spreads a shade and shelter for a plague.

  50 Noon blazes in the city, tumult whirled.

  Flame crowned and garmented

  With robes that flaunt

  The splash of gold he throws

  About my feet,

  55 He weaves above my head

  A golden chaunt,

  A song that throbs and glows

  Through all the noon-day heat.

  No Pan-pipe melodies

  60 Of wind and boughs.

  No tired waves listless wash,

  No silence deep

  With spirit harmonies

  Night only knows;

  65 No tender breaking flush,

  Dawn’s voice of dreams-asleep.

  But buildings glorified,

  Whose windows shine

  And show the heaven, while far

  70 Down the throng’d street

  Mingles man’s song of pride

  With the divine

  Song of the day’s great star

  Struck from the noon-day heat.

  * * *

  75 Shall I turn me to this tavern

  And so rest me from the sultriness?

  * * *

  Dim-watery-lights, gleaming on gibbering faces,

  Faces speechful, barren of soul and sordid.

  Huddled and chewing a jest, lewd and gabbled insidious,

  80 Laughter, born of its dung, flashes and floods like sunlight,

  Filling the room with a sense of a soul lethargic and kindly.

  Touches my soul with a pathos, a hint of a wide desolation.

  * * *

  Green foliage kisses my heart’s sight

  Before I yet have left the street,

  85 My heart feels summer-leaping light

  These summer silent guests to greet.

  The grassy plot with rows of trees,

  Like some sweet pallisaded land

  From off some land outcast of these,

  90 Whose air you breathe is grinding sand.

  These are the outskirts of the woods,

  The shore of mighty forest seas,

  Where Pan plays to the solitudes

  His deep primordial melodies.

  95 Where night and day like ships sail by,

  And no man knoweth this miracle;

  Eternal as the eternal sky

  That is the earth’s dumb oracle.

  * * *

  I saw the face of God to-day,

  100 I heard the music of his smile,

  And yet I was not far away,

  And yet in Paradise the while.

  I lay upon the sparkling grass,

  And God’s own mouth was kissing me,

  105 And there was nothing that did pass

  But blazed with divinity.

  Divine — divine — upon my eyes,

  Upon my hair — divine — divine,

  The fervour of the golden skies,

  110 The ardent gaze of God on mine.

  Let me weave my fantasy

  Of this web like broken glass

  Gleaming through the fretted leaves

  In a quaint intricacy,

  115 Diamond tipping all the grass.

  Hearken as the spirit heaves

  Through the branches and the leaves

  In the shudder of their pulse.

  Delicate nature trembles so

  120 To a ruder nature’s touch,

  And of peace that these convulse

  They have little who should have much.

  Life is so.

  Let me carve my fantasy

  125 Of the fretwork of the leaves.

  Then the trees bent and shook with laughter,

  Each leaf sparkled and danced with glee.

  On my heart their sobs came after,

  Demons gurgling over me.

  130 And my heart was chilled and shaken,


  And I said through my great fear,

  When the throat of tears is slaken

  Joy must come for joy will hear.

  Then spake I to the tree,

  135 ‘Were ye your own desire

  What is it ye would be?’

  Answered the tree to me,

  ‘I am my own desire

  I am what I would be.

  140 If ye were your desire

  Would ye lie under me,

  And see me as you see?’

  ‘I am my own desire

  While I lie under you,

  145 And that which I would be

  Desire will sing to you.’

  Through the web of broken glass

  I knew her eyes looked on me.

  Soon through all the leaves did pass

  150 Her trembling melody.

  Yea! even the life within the grass

  Made green stir

  So to hear

  Desire’s yearned song of immortality.

  155 ‘Mortals — ancient syllables

  Spoken of God’s mouth,

  Do spirits them chronicle

  So they be not lost?

  ‘Music, breathed ephemeral —

  160 Fragrant maid and child;

  Bellow, croak and droning —

  Age and cumbrous man.

  ‘Music that the croaking hears:

  Croak, to mate the music:

  165 Do Angels stand and throw their nets

  For you, from banks Eterne?

  ‘Surely the speech of God’s mouth

  Shall not be for naught!

  Music wrought of God’s passion

  170 Less than vanished dew?

  ‘As the sea through cloud to sea,

  Thought through deed to thought,

  Each returneth as they were,

  So man to God’s mouth?’

  175 So man to God’s mouth,

  Mouth whose breath we are.

  How far — O — how far!

  Spring of the soul’s drouth?

  I heard a whisper once

  180 Of a way to make it near,

  And still that whisper haunts

  Like a wonder round my ear.

  Hope whispered to me,

  I could not hear

  185 The meaning to subdue me

  Of the music most clear.

  * * *

  ‘Music that the croaking hears,

  Croak, to mate the music.’