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Transcript

Today's Poem: 'Break of day in the trenches

Break of Day in the Trenches by Isaac Rosenberg

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 man’s veins

Drop, and are ever dropping;

But mine in my ear is safe—

Just a little white with the dust.

Meaning of the poem:

  • contrasts to the idea that war was a noble and honorable'
  • 'old druid Time'
  • 'As I pull the parapet’s poppy / To stick behind my ear'
  • ‘Sprawled in the bowels of the earth’
  • 'bonds to the whims of murder’
  • ‘Poppies whose roots are in man veins/drop and are ever dropping’
  • 'But mine in my ear is safe-just a little white with the dust.’

Isaac Rosenberg

  • born November 1890 in Bristol, UK
  • a jewish-English
  • while at the Slade School, Rosenberg’s interests turned towards poetry
  • fought in the first world war between 1915 and 1918
  • survived 21 months in the trenches
  • died on April 1st, 1918 at age 28
  • he is considered to be one of the greatest of all English war poets

Setting of the poem

  • ‘The darkness crumbles away’ depicts filth
  • ‘Now you have touched this English hand/You will do the same to a German.'
  • 'haughty athletes” with ‘Strong eyes’ and ‘fine limbs’

Break of Day in the Trenches

by Isaac Rosenberg

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