Snow is a strange white word.
No ice or
Has asked of bud or
For Winter's cost.
Yet ice and frost and
From earth to
This Summer land doth know.
No man knows why.
In all men's hearts it is.
Some spirit
Hath turned with malign
Our lives to mould.
Red fangs have torn His face.
God's blood is shed.
He mourns from His lone
His children dead.
O! ancient crimson curse!
Corrode, consume.
Give back this
Its pristine bloom.
This poem was written in Cape Town in 1914.
Rosenberg had gone their to visit his sister in June 1914.
He returned to England and to enlist the following year.
