Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MIDSUMMER FROST (1), by ISAAC ROSENBERG



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MIDSUMMER FROST (1), by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: A july ghost, aghast at the strange winter
Last Line: Stabbed by life's jealous eyes.
Subject(s): Absence; Love; Soldiers' Writings; Separation; Isolation


A July ghost, aghast at the strange winter,
Wonders, at burning noon, (all summer seeming),
How, like a sad thought buried in light words,
Winter, an alien presence, is ambushed here.
See, from the fire-fountained noon there creep
Lazy yellow ardours towards pale evening,
Dragging the sun across the shell of thought.
A web threaded with fading fire.
Futile and fragile lure!
All July walks her floors that roof this ice,
My frozen heart the summer cannot reach,
Hidden as a root from air, or star from day.
A frozen pool whereon mirth dances
Where the shining boys would fish.

Amorous to woo the golden kissing sun,
Your flaunting green hoods bachic eyes
And flower-flinging hands,
Show quaint as in some frolic masker's whim,
Or painted ruby on a dead white rose.
Deriding those blind who slinked past God
And their untasked inheritance,
(Whose sealed eyes trouble not the sun)
With a thought of Maytime once,
And Maytime dances;
Of a dim pearl-faery boat
And golden glimmerings;
Waving white hands that ripple lakes of sadness
Until the sadness vanishes and the stagnant pool remains.

Pitiless I am, for I bind thee, laughter's apostle,
Even as thy garland's glance, and thy soul is merry, to see
How in night-hanging forest of eating maladies,
A frozen forest of moon-unquiet madness
The moon-drunk, haunted, pierced soul, dies.
Tarnished and arid, dead before it dies.
Starved by its Babel folly, stark it lies,
Stabbed by life's jealous eyes.





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