Classic and Contemporary Poetry
MIDSUMMER FROST (1), by ISAAC ROSENBERG 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. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE EVENING OF THE MIND by DONALD JUSTICE CHRISTMAS AWAY FROM HOME by JANE KENYON THE PROBLEM by CHARLOTTE FISKE BATES WHEN A WOMAN LOVES A MAN by DAVID LEHMAN THIS UNMENTIONABLE FEELING by DAVID LEHMAN A BALLAD OF WHITECHAPEL by ISAAC ROSENBERG |
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