chosen poem
"Returning, We hear the larks"
by Isaac Rosenberg
Sombre the night is:
And, though we have our lives, we know
What sinister threat lurks there.
Dragging these anguished limbs, we only know
This poison-blasted track opens on our camp—
On a little safe sleep.
But hark! Joy—joy—strange joy.
Lo! Heights of night ringing with unseen larks:
Music showering on our upturned listening faces.
Death could drop from the dark
As easily as song—
But song only dropped,
Like a blind man's dreams on the sand
By dangerous tides;
Like a girl's dark hair, for she dreams no ruin lies there,
Or her kisses where a serpent hides.
Sombre the night is:
And, though we have our lives, we know
What sinister threat lurks there.
Dragging these anguished limbs, we only know
This poison-blasted track opens on our camp—
On a little safe sleep.
But hark! Joy—joy—strange joy.
Lo! Heights of night ringing with unseen larks:
Music showering on our upturned listening faces.
Death could drop from the dark
As easily as song—
But song only dropped,
Like a blind man's dreams on the sand
By dangerous tides;
Like a girl's dark hair, for she dreams no ruin lies there,
Or her kisses where a serpent hides.
Theme
The poem’s theme is about the sudden death in a war field, that brings silence. That silence is someway joyful for the soldiers, like the lurks that ends a war, or a sweetness like a cute girl.
Structure
The poem is constructed of four stanzas of 3-3-3-7. There are no significant rhyme scheme. In the first two stanzas, the writer exposes the situation of his life, then in the third stanza the joy of death, finally revealing the poisonous side and the sweetness of the end.
Literary Devices
The poem makes use of imagery, irony and simile. The writer first emphasizes the darkness of his life by the imagery of “Sombre the night is”(line 1). In contrast, the writer describes death by a gas bomb ironically, “on a little safe sleep”(line 6). Then toward the end, the writer uses simile as “Like a blind man’s dream on the sand”(line 13) or “like a girl’s dark hair”(line 15) to impress a dark and sweet, empty image of death.
My Poem
Compared to the chosen poem, my theme were similar but from a different point of view. In a similar structure, the chosen poem conveyed the sweetness of death during wartime, but I chose a point of view of soldiers who remained alive after them. By using anaphora, simile and imagery, similarly to the chosen poem, I expressed two contrasting emotions of a battlefield.