Break of Day in the Trenches
Isaac Rosenberg
1890 to 1918
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The darkness crumbles away.
It is the same old ______ Time as ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
As I pull the parapet’s ______
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would ______ you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies.
Now you ______ touched this English hand
You will do the same ______ a German
Soon, no doubt, if it be your ______
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you ______ grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,
Less chanced than you for life,
Bonds to the ______ of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
______ torn fields of France.
What do you see in ______ eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurled through ______ heavens?
What quaver—what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are ______ man’s veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine ______ my ear is safe—
Just a little white with ______ dust.