An Unpublished Fragment
By Isaac Rosenberg
[The following fragmentary draft of a poem was written by the poet Isaac Rosenberg, one afternoon in 1914, at Camp's Bay, near Capetown, while he was on a visit tp South Africa. The lines are written in pencil on the title-page of a little booklet called The Italian Futurist Painters. Rosenberg was killed in the War, and his fate is foreshadowed in the " Initial Manifesto of Futurism " (1909) printed on the back of the same page and containing the following phrases-" There is no more beauty except in strife . . . We stand upon the extreme promontory of the centuries ! . . . We wish to glorify war-the only health giver of the world . . . "] WHERE the rock's heart is hidden from the sea.
The unwearied sea whose white tongues fawn upon its breast
The rock's heart hidden from the unwearying sea.
Whose white tongues fawn upon its dumb (wet cheeks -{ cold breasts cold cheeks It knows the hunger 0 as the rock's heart is her heart- And my thoughts fawn and my eyes cover her 0 wonderful sea-it is a little rock
Her eyes, S that are the heavens whose depths reach not to
, deep heavens me.
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