Youth is still childhood: when we cast off every cloudy vesture, and our thoughts are clear and mature; when every act is a conscious thought, every thought an attempt to arrest feeling; our feelings strong and overwhelming, our sensitiveness awakened by insignificant things in life; when the skies race tumultuously with our blood, and the earth shines and laughs; when our blood hangs suspended at the rustling of a gown. Our vanity loves to subdue—battle, aggressive. How we despise those older and duller—we want life, newness, excitement.

(Circa 1916.)

CONTENTS

PAGE
INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR[1]
†MOSES: A Play[51]
POEMS FROM CAMP AND TRENCH:
Daughters of War[81]
On Receiving the First News of the War[84]
†Spring, 1916[86]
The Troop Ship[87]
†Marching[88]
Break of Day in the Trenches[89]
Killed in Action[91]
Returning, we hear the Larks[92]
The Destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonian Hordes[93]
The Burning of the Temple[95]
Home-Thoughts from France[96]
The Immortals[97]
Louse Hunting[98]
Girl to Soldier on Leave[100]
Soldier: Twentieth Century[102]
The Jew[103]
The Dying Soldier[104]
Dead Man’s Dump[105]
In War[109]
§The Dead Heroes[112]
FRAGMENTS OF “THE UNICORN”:
I. The Amulet[117]
II. The Song of Tel the Nubian[129]
III. The Tower of Skulls[130]
EARLIER POEMS:
§Expression[135]
*From “Night and Day”[137]
Zion[140]
*Spiritual Isolation: A Fragment[142]
Far Away[144]
Spring[145]
Song[146]
*Heart’s First Word. I.[147]
†Heart’s First Word. II.[149]
*Lady, You are My God[150]
§If You are Fire[151]
In the Underworld[152]
*O, In a World of Men and Women[153]
§A Girl’s Thoughts[154]
A Ballad of Whitechapel[155]
*Tess[159]
The Nun[160]
§In Piccadilly[161]
§A Mood[162]
†First Fruit[163]
A Careless Heart[164]
Dawn[165]
At Night[166]
Creation[168]
Of Any Old Man[170]
The One Lost[171]
§Wedded[172]
Don Juan’s Song[173]
On a Lady Singing[174]
Beauty[175]
A Question[176]
†Chagrin[177]
The Blind God[179]
The Female God[180]
†God[182]
†Sleep[184]
My Days[186]

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The poems whose titles are marked * appeared in a privately issued pamphlet, “Night and Day. By Isaac Rosenberg. 1912” (pp. 24); those marked § in “Youth. By Isaac Rosenberg. London, I. Narodiczky, Printer, 48 Mile End Road, E. 1915” (pp. 18); and those marked † in “Moses. A Play. By Isaac Rosenberg. London, Printed By The Paragon Printing Works, 8 Ocean Street, Stepney Green, E. 1916” (pp. ii + 26).

These pamphlets were the only work issued by the author, in addition to the following single pieces which appeared in various periodicals:

“In the Workshop,” in A Piece of Mosaic (for a Jewish Bazaar).

“Our Dead Heroes,” in South African Women in Council, December, 1914.

“Essay on Art,” Part I. (prose), prefaced by a poem, “Beauty,” in South African Women in Council, December, 1914.