Break of Day in the Trenches
Isaac Rosenberg
1890 to 1918
Track 1
Reconstruct the poem by dragging each line into its correct position. Your goal is to reassemble the original poem as accurately as possible. As you move the lines, you'll see whether your arrangement is correct, helping you explore the poem's flow and meaning. Take your time, enjoy the process, and discover how the poet's words come together to create something truly beautiful.
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What do you see in our eyes
Poppies whose roots are in man's veins
Hurled through still heavens?
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
To stick behind my ear.
To cross the sleeping green between.
Less chanced than you for life,
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German
Bonds to the whims of murder,
What quaver—what heart aghast?
Just a little white with the dust.
Drop, and are ever dropping;
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
But mine in my ear is safe—
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
The darkness crumbles away.
As I pull the parapet's poppy
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,
The torn fields of France.
Your cosmopolitan sympathies.
A queer sardonic rat,
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
At the shrieking iron and flame