Reflections on the imagery and emotional impact of the First World War

Introduction to the poem

This poem reflects on the beginning of the First World War and its consequences.

The title refers to the first month of the war. This poem is a set of precise images and symbols in a fragmented style.
The first stanza begins with questions. "This," of course, is the war: Rosenberg asks what is being destroyed by his "fire". The word has a hellish or sacrificial connotation, but also literally describes the launch of bullets, mortars and shells.

Emotional cost of war

“Dear Heart?": The metaphor here, comparing the heart of a barn, seems to emphasize the emotional cost of the war. A barn is where the grain is stored for the winter; if the heart has a barn, one would assume that is where the crops affected are preserved but now have been consumed by the fire of war.

There are many images such as those of "Iron, honey, gold.": That indicate the hard and cold nature of iron, the sweetness and the strength of honey conservation, the preciousness of gold.

Climax and degradation

It can also identify itself as a climax, seen in reverse. Why did you pass by the beauty and happiness of gold to the state of man's heart degradation.
A burnt space through ripe fields ": The crops destroyed allude, of course, the loss of the lives of young men, but the mature fields also seem to remember the" granary of the heart "of the first room, and the emotional devastation that war has brought with itself.

"Broken tooth.. Fair mouth: The disturbing image of violence done to the beauty closes the poem. Again this line can be read figuratively.