Dead Man's Dump - Isaac Rosenburg

• Title: The sanctity of human life is not present
• Title: Piles of bodies like a wasteland
• Rosenburg's style: Simplistic and declarative where the message is inferred.
• "Shattered track" + "Racketed with their rusty freight" - Heavy machinery, and an even heavier burden.
• "Racketed with their rusty freight" Harsh consonant's used to mimic the brutal and sharp noises of machinery.
• "Struck out like many crowns of thorns" - Religious reference to the crown of thorns worn by Jesus on the cross. War is comparable to what Christian's believe was the greatest crime against humanity. Also war is compared to judgement day here. How low can humanity stoop.
• "And the rusty stakes like sceptres sold" - Roseburg potentially attacking authority who are known to hold spectres to symbolise rule. Perhaps it suggests the honour of ruling England is crushed, like how the cart crushes bodies, by this harsh reality of war.
• "Upon our brothers dear" - Religious phrase "brothers" - shows how all soldiers are brothers in God's eyes, an air of honour for the soliders is present here.
• "The wheels lurched over sprawled dead" - Sprawled suggest the bodies are scattered everywhere
• "But pained them not, though their bones crunched; Their shut mouths made no moan" - They are already dead. Grotesque image here.
• "They lie there huddled friend and foeman" Conflict is disregarded here, death takes anyone.
• "Their bones crunched" relates to the biblical phrase "all flesh is grass"
• "Earth has waited for them All the time of their growth" - Nature will take these soldiers now.
• "Now she has them at last!" The exclamation mark showcases a certain relief - that the solider's "at last!" no longer have to suffer from this hell on earth. Also it suggests that their death has been a long time coming, inevitability of death is discussed here.
• "Stopped and held" For one moment the soldiers stop - then they are killed.
• "What fierce imaginings their dark souls lit?" - Reverse syntax presents this death as unnatural.
• Earth! Have they gone into you? - cosmic idea of, where do the soliders go when they die.
• "Emptied of God-ancestralled essences" - They have been cleansed.