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I<br />
POEMS BY ISAAC ROSENBERG<br />
could write about him. He very rarely dated a<br />
letter, but the address and internal evidence give<br />
a clue to the date. The first extract is from a<br />
letter written, while he was still an apprentice,<br />
to Miss Winifreda Seaton, a friend to whom<br />
Mr. Amschewitz introduced him. Miss Seaton<br />
lent him books, encouraged him to write, discussed<br />
art and literature with him, and criticized his<br />
poems.<br />
"It is horrible to think that all these hours,<br />
when my days are full of vigour and my hands<br />
and soul craving for self-expression, I am bound,<br />
chained to this fiendish mangling-machine, without<br />
hope and almost desire of deliverance, and the<br />
days of youth go <strong>by</strong>. . . . I have tried to make<br />
some sort of self-adjustment to circumstances <strong>by</strong><br />
saying, 'It is all experience''; but, good God! it is<br />
all experience, and nothing else. ... I really<br />
would like to take up painting seriously ; I think<br />
I might do something at that ; but poetry—<br />
despair of ever writing excellent poetry. I can't<br />
look at things in the simple, large way that great<br />
poets do. My mind is so cramped and dulled and<br />
fevered, there is no consistency of purpose, no<br />
oneness of aim ; the very fibres are torn apart, and<br />
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