Isolation : A Fragment

Isaac Rosenberg 1890 (Bristol) – 1918 (Somme)



My Maker shunneth me :
Even as a wretch stricken with leprosy,
So hold I pestilent supremacy.
Yea! He Instil fled far as the uttermost star,
Beyond the unperturbed fastnesses of night
And dreams that bastioned are
By fretted towers of sleep that scare His light.

Of wisdom writ, whereto
My burdened feet may haste withouten rue,
I may not spell-and I am sore to do.
Yea, all (seeing my Maker hath such dread),
Even mine own self-love, wists not but to fly
To Him, and sore besped
Leaves me, its captain, in such mutiny.

Will, deemed incorporate
With me, bath flown ere love, to expiate
Its sinful stay where He did habitate.

Ah me, if they had left a sepulchre ;
But no-the light bath changed not, and in it
Of its same colour stir
Spirits I see not but phantasmed feel to flit.

Air, legioned with such, stirreth,
So that I seem to draw them with my breath,
Ghouls that devour each joy they do to death,
Strange glimmering griefs and sorrowing silences
Bearing dead flowers unseen whose charnel smell
Great awe to my sense is
Even in the rose-time when all else is well.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

59 sec read
89

Quick analysis:

Scheme AAABCBC CDDXXCA EEC BFXF GGGHIHI
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 1,051
Words 197
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 7, 7, 3, 4, 7

Isaac Rosenberg

Isaac Rosenberg was an English poet of the First World War. more…

All Isaac Rosenberg poems | Isaac Rosenberg Books

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