O! ancient crimson curse!
Corrode, consume.
Give back this universe
Its pristine bloom.
The poet was in South Africa when he first received news of the outbreak of what would come to be known as World War I. In the final stanza of this poem, war becomes a metaphorical curse that does nothing but destroy. The poem ends as appeal to reverse the process and go back to a time when the earth was new and innocent.
Moses, from whose loins I sprung,
Lit by a lamp in his blood
Ten immutable rules, a moon
For mutable lampless men.
Rosenberg belonged to that group of British poets made famous by the verse commemorating the most important event of their generation: the Great War. One of the things that distinguished Rosenberg from the rest—aside from the fact that he was equally talented as an artist—was that he was Jewish. Biblical allusions are no stranger to war poetry no matter what specific war is being written about, but Rosenberg’s poetry did not just turn to religious themes and subjects under the stress of trench warfare. He wrote extensively about his Hebrew heritage and legacy. As far as titles and opening lines go, however, none gets right to the point quite like this one.
You have dethroned the ancient God,
You have usurped his Sabbath, his common days;
Yea, every moment is delivered to you,
Our Temple, our Eternal, our one God!
One of the most striking images in Rosenberg’s entire canon is this which appears near the end of the poem. Rosenberg explored the Jewish myth of Lilith—supposedly Adam’s first wife who, unlike Adam, demand equality at the very least—in various poems. Nothing in the poem suggests that “The Female God” is continuation of this exploration as what Rosenberg attempts to be suggesting here is nothing less than a full-scale insurrection against the ancient traditional mythology of a god in the image of man.
None saw their spirits' shadow shake the grass,
Or stood aside for the half used life to pass
Out of those doomed nostrils and the doomed mouth,
When the swift iron burning bee
Drained the wild honey of their youth.
This poem is very often included among those considered to be the greatest to arise out of the horrors of the First World War. The imagery is haunting throughout as it brings to palpable reality the utter and complete waste of humanity that ended on a field or in a trench somewhere in Europe. These particular lines are especially brutal as they take the reader into that morass of corpses who just perhaps minutes or possibly hours or maybe even days earlier had been living, vibrant people with hopes and dreams and the full-blooded spirit of youth.
