Significance
SIGNIFICANCE by ISAAC ROSENBERG
The cunning moment curves its claws
Round the body of our curious wish
But push a shoulder through its straitened laws
Then are you hooked to wriggle like a fish.
Lean in high middle 'twixt two tapering points,
Yet rocks and undulations control
The agile brain the limber joints
The sinews of the soul.
Chaos that coincides, form that refutes all sway,
Shapes to the eye quite other to the touch,
All twisted things continue to our clay
Like added limbs and hair dispreaded overmuch.
And after it draws in its claws
The rocks and unquiet sink to a flat ground,
Then follow desert-hours, the vacuous pause
Till some mad indignation unleashes the hound.
And those flat hours and dead unseeing things
Cower and crowd and burrow for us to use
Where sundry gapings spurn and preparing wings
And O! our hands would use all ere we lose.
| Title |
Significance
|
|---|---|
| Author |
Rosenberg, Isaac (1890-1918)
|
| Item date |
1977
|
| Content | |
| Copyright |
The Isaac Rosenberg Literary Estate. Preliminaries and editorial matter omitted.
|
| Digital repository | |
| Repository name |
ProQuest
|
| Repository address URL | |
| First line |
The cunning moment curves its claws
|
| Publication source |
The Collected Poems of Isaac Rosenberg
|
| Publication editor |
Bottomley, Gordon and Harding, Denys
|
| Publishers |
Chatto & Windus Ltd.
|
| Publication place |
London
|
Collection
Citation
“Significance,” by Rosenberg, Isaac (1890-1918). The Isaac Rosenberg Literary Estate. Preliminaries and editorial matter omitted. via First World War Poetry Digital Archive, accessed April 24, 2024, http://ww1lit.nsms.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/collections/item/3279.
Permitted Use
This item is available for non-commercial educational use under the terms of the Jisc Model Licence. Further details available at: http://ww1lit.nsms.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/permitteduse
