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Poems by Isaac Rosenberg

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—<br />

MOSES<br />

Half beasts snorting into the light,<br />

A phantasmagoria, wild escapade<br />

To our hearts' clue ;<br />

just a daring plan<br />

To the honest mason. What swathed meanings<br />

peer<br />

From his work-a-day council, washed to and from<br />

Your understanding till you doubt<br />

That a word was said<br />

But a terror wakes and forces your eyes<br />

Into his covertly, to search his searching ;<br />

Startled to life, starved hopes slink out<br />

Cowering, incredulous.<br />

Old Hebrew<br />

\_To himself.] His youth is Mattered at Moses'<br />

kind speech to him.<br />

\To the<br />

Young Hebrew.]<br />

I am broken and grey, have seen much in my time,<br />

And all this gay grotesque of childish man<br />

Long passed ; half blind, half deaf, I only grumble<br />

I am not blind or deaf enough for peace.<br />

/JJiave seen splendid young fools cheat themselves<br />

Into a prophet's frenzy ;<br />

I have seen<br />

So many crazed shadows puffed away,<br />

And conscious cheats with such an ache for fame<br />

67

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