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Transcript

Can you think of one prose and one drama that could link to this poem?

The Title

The title referred to a narrative by a soldier in the trenches, but Rosenberg made the man anonymous so that it could be any soldier speaking.This anonymity allows the poem to be relevant to all soldiers and shows the reader the general thoughts of the soldiers of WW1.

How does the poem link to other poems?

A poem which links to this is Herbert Asquith's 'After the Salvo'. Asquith also comments on the irony that 'man's house if crushed; the spider lives', through the rats are shot at the end of his poem. He also mentions poppies.

The poem

-phrased

Context

A version of this poem appears to have been completed by Rosenberg about a month after arriving at the front. He wrote to Edward Marsh on 6th August 1916: 'I am enclosing a poem I wrote in the trenches, which is surely as simple as ordinary talk. You might object to the the second line as vague, but that was the best way I could express the sense of dawn.'

The Message

  • Like many of Rosenberg's poems, this captures a fleeting moment and reflects on its significance. It moves from a quiet, understated description of a solider picking a poppy and disturbing a rat.

  • The narrator is a soldier on duty in the early morning. Once he has disturbed the rat, he begins to reflect on the irony of the situation of not only a rat is freer, and safer, than a fit man, but how free the rat is to pass between German and English trench lines without being killed. He wonders what the rat sees in the eyes of soldiers under fire. Meanwhile, he says, the poppy, although covered with a little dust, is safe behind his ear.

At what time do you think that the poem was written and what theme does it come under?

'Break of Day in the Trenches' was written in June 1916. This is a poem of experience. It comes under the theme of 'reality of war'. This can be seen as an anomaly compared to the other poems under this theme. Many poems under this theme would have been written as a poem of protest.

Break of Day in the Trenches

By Isaac Rosenberg

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