3. Context
• August 1914: Though the title refers to the
first month of the war, this poem was actually
written in 1916, as Rosenberg trained as a
private soldier for the front line.
4. August 1914
• What in our lives is burnt
In the fire of this?
The heart’s dear granary?--metaphor
The much we shall miss?--alliteration
Questions the consequences of war
5. • Three lives hath one life –
Iron, honey, gold.—cryptic comment
The gold, the honey gone –
Left is the hard and cold.
6. • Iron are our lives
Molten right through our youth.
A burnt space through ripe fields
A fair mouth’s broken tooth.
Hesiod, an ancient Greek writer, described these Ages of Man as beginning with the
Golden Age, moving then through the Silver, Bronze, Heroic then Iron Age. Each stage
traces a gradual fall from a higher state, until in the Iron Age man has become unjust,
dishonest and tyrannical. “Gold” here might refer to that paradisal state, while “honey”
seems to have more Biblical associations of plenitude, health and preciousness (Canaan
is the “land of milk and honey”). August 1914, Rosenberg may be suggesting, is ushering
the “hard and cold” Age of Iron, defined by callousness and cruelty.
7. • Iron are our lives
Molten right through our youth.-
A burnt space through ripe fields
A fair mouth’s broken tooth. Passion of youth
or struggle for life
The burnt field s of France
or Young mend cut down
in their prime.
Civilization being destroyed
or
Young men being mutilitated
with bullets
9. Structure
• STRUCTURE: Written in a rather rigid iambic
pentameter— obviously attempting a high-
flown, elevated style— this is comprised of
two octet stanzas of the same rhyme scheme,
ABBACDCD
11. Summary
• This poem tells the story of an office worker
who has died in battle on the front. Once he
was a frustrated clerk living a boring life, living
out his heroic fantasies through books. Dying
for his country he finds true satisfaction,
having lived out his heroic dreams.
12. Context
• Asquith wrote this poem in 1912 when
working as a lawyer in the City. Asquith is the
son of former Prime Minister Herbert
Asquith, who led Britain from 1910-1916.
13. Structure
• Written in a rather rigid iambic pentameter—
obviously attempting a high-flown, elevated
style— this is comprised of two octet stanzas
of the same rhyme scheme, ABBACDCD.
• First stanza focuses on boring life and job
• Second stanza focuses on a dream fulfilled
14. The Volunteer
Here lies a clerk who half his life had spent
Toiling at ledgers in a city grey,
Thinking that so his days would drift away
With no lance broken in life’s tournament
Yet ever ‘twixt the books and his bright eyes
The gleaming eagles of the legions came,
And horsemen, charging under phantom skies,
Went thundering past beneath the oriflamme.
Flag of the King of France-medieval term
15. • And now those waiting dreams are satisfied
From twilight to the halls of dawn he went;
His lance is broken; but he lies content
With that high hour, in which he lived and
died.
And falling thus, he wants no recompense,
Who found his battle in the last resort
Nor needs he any hearse to bear him hence,
Who goes to join the men of Agincourt.
Halls at work are being compared
to the afterlife
He is elevated to a place among the
greatest heroes that have died in
France for England: the men of
Henry V, who though outnumbered
defeated the French army on French
soil at the Battle of Agincourt.
16. Rosenberg
• Rosenberg was born to working class parents
and studied as an apprentice. He joined up,
primarily to provide money for his family. He
was in France by early 1916 as a private
soldier; in contrast to many of the most
famous soldier poets, Rosenberg experienced
the war not as an officer but in the ranks.
17. Structure
• A precise and very regularly constructed
poem, comprising five quatrains of simple,
alternating rhyme (ABAB). Each alternates
between an iambic trimeter (three stressed
and six unstressed beats per line) and iambic
dimeter (four syllable lines).
18. On Receiving News of the War’
•
• Snow is a strange white word.
No ice or frost
Has asked of bud or bird
For Winter’s cost.
19. • Yet ice and frost and snow
From earth to sky
This Summer land doth know.
No man knows why.
• Implied comparison of snow in Europe to
snow in SA-Implied result death is on the way
20. • In all men’s hearts it is.
Some spirit old
Hath turned with malign kiss (Judas)
Our lives to mould.
• Suggests human motivation for the war
21. • Red fangs have torn His face.
God’s blood is shed.
He mourns from His lone place
His children dead.
• God has been attacked: and he sheds blood. The
implication here is perhaps that God’s blood is that of those
who will die in the war; but the image is uncompromising,
and emphasises the power of evil, and the vulnerability of
God. The use of a short end-stopped statement emphasises
this.
• The image of God here is of a deity distraught, alone and
removed, who mourns the death of “his children.
22. •
• O! ancient crimson curse!
Corrode, consume.
Give back this universe
Its pristine bloom.
• Interjection shows strong feeling
Editor's Notes
Writer was in South Africa, when he heard about the war.
