Break of Day in the Trenches (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Isaac Rosenberg
- First Published: 1916
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Nature, Europe or Europeans, Flowers, England or English people, Violence, War, Death or dying, World War I, Soldiers, Life and death, Animals
The Poem
As its title suggests, Isaac Rosenberg’s “Break of Day in the Trenches” is a poem in which time juxtaposes with setting to create a new poetic perception of life and death. It is a short free-verse poem of twenty-six lines, capturing the bemusement of an ordinary infantryman confronting the harshness of existence in the trenches during World War I. It is also a reverie on life and the persistence of life in the midst of war.
Almost every line contains some reference to violent death, sometimes death on a grand scale. Yet even in the midst of mass warfare,...
[The entire page is 1480 words long]
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