Isaac Rosenberg: Soldier: Twentieth Century

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

British writers on peace and war

Isaac Rosenberg: Poems on war

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Isaac Rosenberg
Soldier: Twentieth Century

I love you, great new Titan!
Am I not you?
Napoleon or Caesar
Out of you grew.

Out of the unthinkable torture,
Eyes kissed by death,
Won back to the world again,
Lost and won in a breath,

Cruel men are made immortal,
Out of your pain born.
They have stolen the sun’s power
With their feet on your shoulders worn.

Let them shrink from your girth,
That has outgrown the pallid days,
When you slept like Circe’s swine,
Or a word in the brain’s way.