And if the spirit be not there, Why is fragrance in the hair?



There's Wisdom in Women



"Oh love is fair, and love is rare;" my dear one she said, "But love goes lightly over." I bowed her foolish head, And kissed her hair and laughed at her. Such a child was she; So new to love, so true to love, and she spoke so bitterly.

But there's wisdom in women, of more than they have known, And thoughts go blowing through them, are wiser than their own, Or how should my dear one, being ignorant and young, Have cried on love so bitterly, with so true a tongue?



He Wonders Whether to Praise or to Blame Her



I have peace to weigh your worth, now all is over, But if to praise or blame you, cannot say. For, who decries the loved, decries the lover; Yet what man lauds the thing he's thrown away?

Be you, in truth, this dull, slight, cloudy naught, The more fool I, so great a fool to adore; But if you're that high goddess once I thought, The more your godhead is, I lose the more.

Dear fool, pity the fool who thought you clever! Dear wisdom, do not mock the fool that missed you! Most fair, — the blind has lost your face for ever! Most foul, — how could I see you while I kissed you?

So . . . the poor love of fools and blind I've proved you, For, foul or lovely, 'twas a fool that loved you.



A Memory (From a sonnet-sequence)



Somewhile before the dawn I rose, and stept Softly along the dim way to your room, And found you sleeping in the quiet gloom, And holiness about you as you slept. I knelt there; till your waking fingers crept About my head, and held it. I had rest Unhoped this side of Heaven, beneath your breast. I knelt a long time, still; nor even wept.

It was great wrong you did me; and for gain Of that poor moment's kindliness, and ease, And sleepy mother-comfort! Child, you know How easily love leaps out to dreams like these, Who has seen them true. And love that's wakened so Takes all too long to lay asleep again.

Waikiki, October 1913



One Day



Today I have been happy. All the day I held the memory of you, and wove Its laughter with the dancing light o' the spray, And sowed the sky with tiny clouds of love, And sent you following the white waves of sea, And crowned your head with fancies, nothing worth, Stray buds from that old dust of misery, Being glad with a new foolish quiet mirth.

So lightly I played with those dark memories, Just as a child, beneath the summer skies, Plays hour by hour with a strange shining stone, For which (he knows not) towns were fire of old, And love has been betrayed, and murder done, And great kings turned to a little bitter mould.

The Pacific, October 1913



Waikiki



Warm perfumes like a breath from vine and tree Drift down the darkness. Plangent, hidden from eyes Somewhere an 'eukaleli' thrills and cries And stabs with pain the night's brown savagery. And dark scents whisper; and dim waves creep to me, Gleam like a woman's hair, stretch out, and rise; And new stars burn into the ancient skies, Over the murmurous soft Hawaian sea.

And I recall, lose, grasp, forget again, And still remember, a tale I have heard, or known, An empty tale, of idleness and pain, Of two that loved — or did not love — and one Whose perplexed heart did evil, foolishly, A long while since, and by some other sea.

Waikiki, 1913



Hauntings



In the grey tumult of these after years Oft silence falls; the incessant wranglers part; And less-than-echoes of remembered tears Hush all the loud confusion of the heart; And a shade, through the toss'd ranks of mirth and crying Hungers, and pains, and each dull passionate mood, — Quite lost, and all but all forgot, undying, Comes back the ecstasy of your quietude.

So a poor ghost, beside his misty streams, Is haunted by strange doubts, evasive dreams, Hints of a pre-Lethean life, of men, Stars, rocks, and flesh, things unintelligible, And light on waving grass, he knows not when, And feet that ran, but where, he cannot tell.

The Pacific, 1914



Sonnet (Suggested by some of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research)



Not with vain tears, when we're beyond the sun, We'll beat on the substantial doors, nor tread Those dusty high-roads of the aimless dead Plaintive for Earth; but rather turn and run Down some close-covered by-way of the air, Some low sweet alley between wind and wind, Stoop under faint gleams, thread the shadows, find Some whispering ghost-forgotten nook, and there

Spend in pure converse our eternal day; Think each in each, immediately wise; Learn all we lacked before; hear, know, and say What this tumultuous body now denies; And feel, who have laid our groping hands away; And see, no longer blinded by our eyes.



Clouds



Down the blue night the unending columns press In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow, Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snow Up to the white moon's hidden loveliness. Some pause in their grave wandering comradeless, And turn with profound gesture vague and slow, As who would pray good for the world, but know Their benediction empty as they bless.

They say that the Dead die not, but remain Near to the rich heirs of their grief and mirth. I think they ride the calm mid-heaven, as these, In wise majestic melancholy train, And watch the moon, and the still-raging seas, And men, coming and going on the earth.

The Pacific, October 1913



Mutability



They say there's a high windless world and strange, Out of the wash of days and temporal tide, Where Faith and Good, Wisdom and Truth abide, 'Aeterna corpora', subject to no change. There the sure suns of these pale shadows move; There stand the immortal ensigns of our war; Our melting flesh fixed Beauty there, a star, And perishing hearts, imperishable Love. . . .

Dear, we know only that we sigh, kiss, smile; Each kiss lasts but the kissing; and grief goes over; Love has no habitation but the heart. Poor straws! on the dark flood we catch awhile, Cling, and are borne into the night apart. The laugh dies with the lips, 'Love' with the lover.

South Kensington — Makaweli, 1913



Other Poems



The Busy Heart



Now that we've done our best and worst, and parted, I would fill my mind with thoughts that will not rend. (O heart, I do not dare go empty-hearted) I'll think of Love in books, Love without end; Women with child, content; and old men sleeping; And wet strong ploughlands, scarred for certain grain; And babes that weep, and so forget their weeping; And the young heavens, forgetful after rain; And evening hush, broken by homing wings; And Song's nobility, and Wisdom holy, That live, we dead. I would think of a thousand things, Lovely and durable, and taste them slowly, One after one, like tasting a sweet food. I have need to busy my heart with quietude.



Love



Love is a breach in the walls, a broken gate, Where that comes in that shall not go again; Love sells the proud heart's citadel to Fate. They have known shame, who love unloved. Even then, When two mouths, thirsty each for each, find slaking, And agony's forgot, and hushed the crying Of credulous hearts, in heaven — such are but taking Their own poor dreams within their arms, and lying Each in his lonely night, each with a ghost. Some share that night. But they know love grows colder, Grows false and dull, that was sweet lies at most. Astonishment is no more in hand or shoulder, But darkens, and dies out from kiss to kiss. All this is love; and all love is but this.



Unfortunate



Heart, you are restless as a paper scrap That's tossed down dusty pavements by the wind; Saying, "She is most wise, patient and kind. Between the small hands folded in her lap Surely a shamed head may bow down at length, And find forgiveness where the shadows stir About her lips, and wisdom in her strength, Peace in her peace. Come to her, come to her!" . . .

She will not care. She'll smile to see me come, So that I think all Heaven in flower to fold me. She'll give me all I ask, kiss me and hold me, And open wide upon that holy air The gates of peace, and take my tiredness home, Kinder than God. But, heart, she will not care.



The Chilterns



Your hands, my dear, adorable, Your lips of tenderness — Oh, I've loved you faithfully and well, Three years, or a bit less. It wasn't a success.

Thank God, that's done! and I'll take the road, Quit of my youth and you, The Roman road to Wendover By Tring and Lilley Hoo, As a free man may do.

For youth goes over, the joys that fly, The tears that follow fast; And the dirtiest things we do must lie Forgotten at the last; Even Love goes past.

What's left behind I shall not find, The splendour and the pain; The splash of sun, the shouting wind, And the brave sting of rain, I may not meet again.

But the years, that take the best away, Give something in the end; And a better friend than love have they, For none to mar or mend, That have themselves to friend.

I shall desire and I shall find The best of my desires; The autumn road, the mellow wind That soothes the darkening shires. And laughter, and inn-fires.

White mist about the black hedgerows, The slumbering Midland plain, The silence where the clover grows, And the dead leaves in the lane, Certainly, these remain.

And I shall find some girl perhaps, And a better one than you, With eyes as wise, but kindlier, And lips as soft, but true. And I daresay she will do.



Home



I came back late and tired last night Into my little room, To the long chair and the firelight And comfortable gloom.

But as I entered softly in I saw a woman there, The line of neck and cheek and chin, The darkness of her hair, The form of one I did not know Sitting in my chair.

I stood a moment fierce and still, Watching her neck and hair. I made a step to her; and saw That there was no one there.

It was some trick of the firelight That made me see her there. It was a chance of shade and light And the cushion in the chair.

Oh, all you happy over the earth, That night, how could I sleep? I lay and watched the lonely gloom; And watched the moonlight creep From wall to basin, round the room, All night I could not sleep.



The Night Journey



Hands and lit faces eddy to a line; The dazed last minutes click; the clamour dies. Beyond the great-swung arc o' the roof, divine, Night, smoky-scarv'd, with thousand coloured eyes

Glares the imperious mystery of the way. Thirsty for dark, you feel the long-limbed train Throb, stretch, thrill motion, slide, pull out and sway, Strain for the far, pause, draw to strength again. . . .

As a man, caught by some great hour, will rise, Slow-limbed, to meet the light or find his love; And, breathing long, with staring sightless eyes, Hands out, head back, agape and silent, move

Sure as a flood, smooth as a vast wind blowing; And, gathering power and purpose as he goes, Unstumbling, unreluctant, strong, unknowing, Borne by a will not his, that lifts, that grows,

Sweep out to darkness, triumphing in his goal, Out of the fire, out of the little room. . . . — There is an end appointed, O my soul! Crimson and green the signals burn; the gloom

Is hung with steam's far-blowing livid streamers. Lost into God, as lights in light, we fly, Grown one with will, end-drunken huddled dreamers. The white lights roar. The sounds of the world die.

And lips and laughter are forgotten things. Speed sharpens; grows. Into the night, and on, The strength and splendour of our purpose swings. The lamps fade; and the stars. We are alone.



Song



All suddenly the wind comes soft, And Spring is here again; And the hawthorn quickens with buds of green, And my heart with buds of pain.

My heart all Winter lay so numb, The earth so dead and frore, That I never thought the Spring would come, Or my heart wake any more.

But Winter's broken and earth has woken, And the small birds cry again; And the hawthorn hedge puts forth its buds, And my heart puts forth its pain.



Beauty and Beauty



When Beauty and Beauty meet All naked, fair to fair, The earth is crying-sweet, And scattering-bright the air, Eddying, dizzying, closing round, With soft and drunken laughter; Veiling all that may befall After — after —

Where Beauty and Beauty met, Earth's still a-tremble there, And winds are scented yet, And memory-soft the air, Bosoming, folding glints of light, And shreds of shadowy laughter; Not the tears that fill the years After — after —



The Way That Lovers Use



The way that lovers use is this; They bow, catch hands, with never a word, And their lips meet, and they do kiss, — So I have heard.

They queerly find some healing so, And strange attainment in the touch; There is a secret lovers know, — I have read as much.

And theirs no longer joy nor smart, Changing or ending, night or day; But mouth to mouth, and heart on heart, — So lovers say.



Mary and Gabriel



Young Mary, loitering once her garden way, Felt a warm splendour grow in the April day, As wine that blushes water through. And soon, Out of the gold air of the afternoon, One knelt before her: hair he had, or fire, Bound back above his ears with golden wire, Baring the eager marble of his face. Not man's nor woman's was the immortal grace Rounding the limbs beneath that robe of white, And lighting the proud eyes with changeless light, Incurious. Calm as his wings, and fair, That presence filled the garden. She stood there, Saying, "What would you, Sir?" He told his word, "Blessed art thou of women!" Half she heard, Hands folded and face bowed, half long had known, The message of that clear and holy tone, That fluttered hot sweet sobs about her heart; Such serene tidings moved such human smart. Her breath came quick as little flakes of snow. Her hands crept up her breast. She did but know It was not hers. She felt a trembling stir Within her body, a will too strong for her That held and filled and mastered all. With eyes Closed, and a thousand soft short broken sighs, She gave submission; fearful, meek, and glad. . . .

She wished to speak. Under her breasts she had Such multitudinous burnings, to and fro, And throbs not understood; she did not know If they were hurt or joy for her; but only That she was grown strange to herself, half lonely, All wonderful, filled full of pains to come And thoughts she dare not think, swift thoughts and dumb, Human, and quaint, her own, yet very far, Divine, dear, terrible, familiar . . . Her heart was faint for telling; to relate Her limbs' sweet treachery, her strange high estate, Over and over, whispering, half revealing, Weeping; and so find kindness to her healing. 'Twixt tears and laughter, panic hurrying her, She raised her eyes to that fair messenger. He knelt unmoved, immortal; with his eyes Gazing beyond her, calm to the calm skies; Radiant, untroubled in his wisdom, kind. His sheaf of lilies stirred not in the wind. How should she, pitiful with mortality, Try the wide peace of that felicity With ripples of her perplexed shaken heart, And hints of human ecstasy, human smart, And whispers of the lonely weight she bore, And how her womb within was hers no more And at length hers? Being tired, she bowed her head; And said, "So be it!" The great wings were spread Showering glory on the fields, and fire. The whole air, singing, bore him up, and higher, Unswerving, unreluctant. Soon he shone A gold speck in the gold skies; then was gone.

The air was colder, and grey. She stood alone.



The Funeral of Youth: Threnody



The day that YOUTH had died, There came to his grave-side, In decent mourning, from the country's ends, Those scatter'd friends Who had lived the boon companions of his prime, And laughed with him and sung with him and wasted, In feast and wine and many-crown'd carouse, The days and nights and dawnings of the time When YOUTH kept open house, Nor left untasted Aught of his high emprise and ventures dear, No quest of his unshar'd — All these, with loitering feet and sad head bar'd, Followed their old friend's bier. FOLLY went first, With muffled bells and coxcomb still revers'd; And after trod the bearers, hat in hand — LAUGHTER, most hoarse, and Captain PRIDE with tanned And martial face all grim, and fussy JOY, Who had to catch a train, and LUST, poor, snivelling boy; These bore the dear departed. Behind them, broken-hearted, Came GRIEF, so noisy a widow, that all said, "Had he but wed Her elder sister SORROW, in her stead!" And by her, trying to soothe her all the time, The fatherless children, COLOUR, TUNE, and RHYME (The sweet lad RHYME), ran all-uncomprehending. Then, at the way's sad ending, Round the raw grave they stay'd. Old WISDOM read, In mumbling tone, the Service for the Dead. There stood ROMANCE, The furrowing tears had mark'd her rouged cheek; Poor old CONCEIT, his wonder unassuaged; Dead INNOCENCY's daughter, IGNORANCE; And shabby, ill-dress'd GENEROSITY; And ARGUMENT, too full of woe to speak; PASSION, grown portly, something middle-aged; And FRIENDSHIP — not a minute older, she; IMPATIENCE, ever taking out his watch; FAITH, who was deaf, and had to lean, to catch Old WISDOM's endless drone. BEAUTY was there, Pale in her black; dry-eyed; she stood alone. Poor maz'd IMAGINATION; FANCY wild; ARDOUR, the sunlight on his greying hair; CONTENTMENT, who had known YOUTH as a child And never seen him since. And SPRING came too, Dancing over the tombs, and brought him flowers — She did not stay for long. And TRUTH, and GRACE, and all the merry crew, The laughing WINDS and RIVERS, and lithe HOURS; And HOPE, the dewy-eyed; and sorrowing SONG; — Yes, with much woe and mourning general, At dead YOUTH's funeral, Even these were met once more together, all, Who erst the fair and living YOUTH did know; All, except only LOVE. LOVE had died long ago.



Grantchester



The Old Vicarage, Grantchester

(Cafe des Westens, Berlin, May 1912)



Just now the lilac is in bloom, All before my little room; And in my flower-beds, I think, Smile the carnation and the pink; And down the borders, well I know, The poppy and the pansy blow . . . Oh! there the chestnuts, summer through, Beside the river make for you A tunnel of green gloom, and sleep Deeply above; and green and deep The stream mysterious glides beneath, Green as a dream and deep as death. — Oh, damn! I know it! and I know How the May fields all golden show, And when the day is young and sweet, Gild gloriously the bare feet That run to bathe . . . 'Du lieber Gott!'

Here am I, sweating, sick, and hot, And there the shadowed waters fresh Lean up to embrace the naked flesh. Temperamentvoll German Jews Drink beer around; — and THERE the dews Are soft beneath a morn of gold. Here tulips bloom as they are told; Unkempt about those hedges blows An English unofficial rose; And there the unregulated sun Slopes down to rest when day is done, And wakes a vague unpunctual star, A slippered Hesper; and there are Meads towards Haslingfield and Coton Where das Betreten's not verboten.

ei'/qe genoi/mhn . . . would I were * In Grantchester, in Grantchester! — Some, it may be, can get in touch With Nature there, or Earth, or such. And clever modern men have seen A Faun a-peeping through the green, And felt the Classics were not dead, To glimpse a Naiad's reedy head, Or hear the Goat-foot piping low: . . . But these are things I do not know. I only know that you may lie Day long and watch the Cambridge sky, And, flower-lulled in sleepy grass, Hear the cool lapse of hours pass, Until the centuries blend and blur In Grantchester, in Grantchester. . . . Still in the dawnlit waters cool His ghostly Lordship swims his pool, And tries the strokes, essays the tricks, Long learnt on Hellespont, or Styx. Dan Chaucer hears his river still Chatter beneath a phantom mill. Tennyson notes, with studious eye, How Cambridge waters hurry by . . . And in that garden, black and white, Creep whispers through the grass all night; And spectral dance, before the dawn, A hundred Vicars down the lawn; Curates, long dust, will come and go On lissom, clerical, printless toe; And oft between the boughs is seen The sly shade of a Rural Dean . . . Till, at a shiver in the skies, Vanishing with Satanic cries, The prim ecclesiastic rout Leaves but a startled sleeper-out, Grey heavens, the first bird's drowsy calls, The falling house that never falls.

* epsilon-iota'/-theta-epsilon gamma-epsilon-nu-omicron-iota /-mu-eta-nu

God! I will pack, and take a train, And get me to England once again! For England's the one land, I know, Where men with Splendid Hearts may go; And Cambridgeshire, of all England, The shire for Men who Understand; And of THAT district I prefer The lovely hamlet Grantchester. For Cambridge people rarely smile, Being urban, squat, and packed with guile; And Royston men in the far South Are black and fierce and strange of mouth; At Over they fling oaths at one, And worse than oaths at Trumpington, And Ditton girls are mean and dirty, And there's none in Harston under thirty, And folks in Shelford and those parts Have twisted lips and twisted hearts, And Barton men make Cockney rhymes, And Coton's full of nameless crimes, And things are done you'd not believe At Madingley on Christmas Eve. Strong men have run for miles and miles, When one from Cherry Hinton smiles; Strong men have blanched, and shot their wives, Rather than send them to St. Ives; Strong men have cried like babes, bydam, To hear what happened at Babraham. But Grantchester! ah, Grantchester! There's peace and holy quiet there, Great clouds along pacific skies, And men and women with straight eyes, Lithe children lovelier than a dream, A bosky wood, a slumbrous stream, And little kindly winds that creep Round twilight corners, half asleep. In Grantchester their skins are white; They bathe by day, they bathe by night; The women there do all they ought; The men observe the Rules of Thought. They love the Good; they worship Truth; They laugh uproariously in youth; (And when they get to feeling old, They up and shoot themselves, I'm told) . . .

Ah God! to see the branches stir Across the moon at Grantchester! To smell the thrilling-sweet and rotten Unforgettable, unforgotten River-smell, and hear the breeze Sobbing in the little trees. Say, do the elm-clumps greatly stand Still guardians of that holy land? The chestnuts shade, in reverend dream, The yet unacademic stream? Is dawn a secret shy and cold Anadyomene, silver-gold? And sunset still a golden sea From Haslingfield to Madingley? And after, ere the night is born, Do hares come out about the corn? Oh, is the water sweet and cool, Gentle and brown, above the pool? And laughs the immortal river still Under the mill, under the mill? Say, is there Beauty yet to find? And Certainty? and Quiet kind? Deep meadows yet, for to forget The lies, and truths, and pain? . . . oh! yet Stands the Church clock at ten to three? And is there honey still for tea?



Fafaia

Stars that seem so close and bright, Watched by lovers through the night, Swim in emptiness, men say, Many a mile and year away.

And yonder star that burns so white, May have died to dust and night Ten, maybe, or fifteen year, Before it shines upon my dear.

Oh! often among men below, Heart cries out to heart, I know, And one is dust a many years, Child, before the other hears.

Heart from heart is all as far, Fafaia, as start from star.

Saanapu, November 1913.



Appendix

NOTE

The Appendix contains: (1) the only two coherent fragments found in the notebook which Brooke used in the last month of his life; a little song, written, I think on his travels; and a poem, dating probably from 1912, which for some reason he left unrevised; (2) a few "lighter" poems which I dare say he would have printed on their merits if he had published a volume in which they would not have been out of key. Two of these, the "Letter to a Live Poet" and "The Little Dog's Day," were written for Westminster Gazette competitions, in which they won prizes. Edward Marsh



Fragment

I strayed about the deck, an hour, to-night Under a cloudy moonless sky; and peeped In at the windows, watched my friends at table, In the windows, watched my friends at table, Or playing cards, or standing in the doorway, Or coming out into the darkness. Still No one could see me.

I would have thought of them —Heedless, within a week of battle—in pity, Pride in their strength and in the weight and firmness And link'd beauty of bodies, and pity that This gay machine of splendour 'ld soon be broken, Thought little of, pashed, scattered, . . .

Only, always, I could but see them—against the lamplight—pass Like coloured shadows, thinner than filmy glass, Slight bubbles, fainter than the wave's faint light, That broke to phosphorus out in the night, Perishing things and strange ghosts—soon to die To other ghosts—this one, or that or I.

April 1915.



The Dance

A Song

As the Wind, and as the Wind, In a corner of the way, Goes stepping, stands twirling, Invisibly, comes whirling, Bows before, and skips behind, In a grave, an endless play—

So my Heart, and so my Heart, Following where your feet have gone, Stirs dust of old dreams there; He turns a toe; he gleams there, Treading you a dance apart. But you see not. You pass on.

April 1915.



Song

The way of love was thus. He was born one winter morn With hands delicious, And it was well with us.

Love came our quiet way, Lit pride in us, and died in us, All in a winter's day. There is no more to say.

1913 (?).



Sometimes Even Now . . .

Sometimes even now I may Steal a prisoner's holiday, Slip, when all is worst, the bands, Hurry back, and duck beneath Time's old tyrannous groping hands, Speed away with laughing breath Back to all I'll never know, Back to you, a year ago.

Truant there from Time and Pain, What I had, I find again: Sunlight in the boughs above, Sunlight in your hair and dress, The hands too proud for all but Love, The Lips of utter kindliness, The Heart of bravery swift and clean Where the best was safe, I knew, And laughter in the gold and green, And song, and friends, and ever you With smiling and familiar eyes, You—but friendly: you—but true.

And Innocence accounted wise, And Faith the fool, the pitiable. Love so rare, one would swear All of earth for ever well—

Careless lips and flying hair, And little things I may not tell.

It does but double the heart-ache When I wake, when I wake.

1912 (?).



Sonnet: in Time of Revolt

The Thing must End. I am no boy! I am No BOY! I being twenty-one. Uncle, you make A great mistake, a very great mistake, In chiding me for letting slip a "Damn!" What's more, you called me "Mother's one ewe lamb," Bade me "refrain from swearing—for her sake— Till I'm grown up" . . . —By God! I think you take Too much upon you, Uncle William!

You say I am your brother's only son. I know it. And, "What of it?" I reply. My heart's resolved. Something must be done. So shall I curb, so baffle, so suppress This too avuncular officiousness, Intolerable consanguinity.

January 1908.



A Letter to a Live Poet

Sir, since the last Elizabethan died, Or, rather, that more Paradisal muse, Blind with much light, passed to the light more glorious Or deeper blindness, no man's hand, as thine, Has, on the world's most noblest chord of song, Struck certain magic strains. Ears satiate With the clamorous, timorous whisperings of to-day, Thrilled to perceive once more the spacious voice And serene utterance of old. We heard —With rapturous breath half-held, as a dreamer dreams Who dares not know it dreaming, lest he wake— The odorous, amorous style of poetry, The melancholy knocking of those lines, The long, low soughing of pentameters, —Or the sharp of rhyme as a bird's cry— And the innumerable truant polysyllables Multitudinously twittering like a bee. Fulfilled our hearts were with that music then, And all the evenings sighed it to the dawn, And all the lovers heard it from all the trees. All of the accents upon all the norms! —And ah! the stress on the penultimate! We never knew blank verse could have such feet.

Where is it now? Oh, more than ever, now I sometimes think no poetry is read Save where some sepultured Caesura bled, Royally incarnadining all the line. Is the imperial iamb laid to rest, And the young trochee, having done enough?

Ah! turn again! Sing so to us, who are sick Of seeming-simple rhymes, bizarre emotions, Decked in the simple verses of the day, Infinite meaning in the little gloom, Irregular thoughts in stanzas regular, Modern despair in antique meters, myths Incomprehensible at evening, And symbols that mean nothing in the dawn. The slow lines swell. The new styles sighs. The Celt Moans round with many voices.

God! to see Gaunt anapaests stand up out of the verse, Combative accents, stress where no stress should be, Spondee on spondee, iamb on choriamb, The thrill of the all the tribrachs in the world, And all the vowels rising to the E! To hear the blessed mutter of those verbs, Conjunctions passionate toward each other's arms, And epithets like amaranthine lovers Stretching luxuriously to the stars, All prouder pronouns than the dawn, and all The thunder of the trumpets of the noun!

January 1911.



Fragment on Painters

There is an evil which that Race attaints Who represent God's World with oily paints, Who mock the Universe, so rare and sweet, With spots of colour on a canvas sheet, Defile the Lovely and insult the Good By scrawling upon little bits of wood. They'd snare the moon, and catch the immortal sun With madder brown and pale vermilion, Entrap an English evening's magic hush . . .



The True Beatitude (Bouts-Rimes)

They say when the Great Prompter's hand shall ring Down the last curtain upon earth and sea, All the Good Mimes will have eternity To praise their Author, worship love and sing; Or to the walls of Heaven wandering Look down on those damned for a fretful d——, Mock them (all theologians agree On this reward for virtue), laugh, and fling

New sulphur on the sin-incarnadined . . . Ah, Love! still temporal, and still atmospheric, Teleologically unperturbed, We share a peace by no divine divined, An earthly garden hidden from any cleric, Untrodden of God, by no Eternal curbed.

1913.



Sonnet Reversed

Hand trembling towards hand; the amazing lights Of heart and eye. They stood on supreme heights.

Ah, the delirious weeks of honeymoon! Soon they returned, and after strange adventures, Settled at Balham by the end of June, Their money was in Can. Pacs. B. Debentures, And in Antofagastas. Still he went Cityward daily; still she did abide At home. And both were really quite content With work and social pleasures. Then they died. They left three children (beside George, who drank); The eldest Jane, who married Mr. Bell, William, the head-clerk in the County Bank, And Henry, a stock-broker, doing well.

Lulworth, 1 January 1911.



It's Not Going to Happen Again

I have known the most dear that is granted us here, More supreme than the gods know above, Like a star I was hurled through the sweet of the world, And the height and the light of it, Love. I have risen to the uttermost Heaven of Joy, I have sunk to the sheer Hell of Pain— But—it's not going to happen again, my boy, It's not going to happen again.

It's the very first word that poor Juliet heard From her Romeo over the Styx; And the Roman will tell Cleopatra in hell When she starts her immortal old tricks; What Paris was tellin' for good-bye to Helen When he bundled her into the train— Oh, it's not going to happen again, old girl, It's not going to happen again.

Chateau Lake Louise, Canada, 1913.



The Little Dog's Day

All in the town were still asleep, When the sun came up with a shout and a leap. In the lonely streets unseen by man, A little dog danced. And the day began.

All his life he'd been good, as far as he could, And the poor little beast had done all that he should. But this morning he swore, by Odin and Thor And the Canine Valhalla—he'd stand it no more!

So his prayer he got granted—to do just what he wanted, Prevented by none, for the space of one day. "Jam incipiebo [1], sedere facebo [2]," In dog-Latin he quoth, "Euge! sophos! hurray!"

He fought with the he-dogs, and winked at the she-dogs, A thing that had never been heard of before. "For the stigma of gluttony, I care not a button!" he Cried, and ate all he could swallow—and more.

He took sinewy lumps from the shins of old frumps, And mangled the errand-boys—when he could get 'em. He shammed furious rabies, and bit all the babies [3], And followed the cats up the trees, and then ate' em!

They thought 'twas the devil was holding a revel, And sent for the parson to drive him away; For the town never knew such a hullabaloo As that little dog raised—till the end of that day.

When the blood-red sun had gone burning down, And the lights were lit in the little town, Outside, in the gloom of the twilight grey, The little dog died when he'd had his day.

July 1907.



[Footnote 1: Now we're off]

[Footnote 2: I'll make them sit up.]

[Footnote 3: Pronounce either to suit rhyme.]



[End of Poems.]

London, October, 1915.



Rupert Brooke: A Biographical Note



Any biographical account of Rupert Brooke must of necessity be brief; yet it is well to know the facts of his romantic career, and to see him as far as may be through the eyes of those who knew him (the writer was unfortunately not of this number) in order the better to appreciate his work.

He was born at Rugby on August 3, 1887, his father, William Brooke, being an assistant master at the school. Here Brooke was educated, and in 1905 won a prize for a poem called "The Bastille", which has been described as "fine, fluent stuff." He took a keen interest in every form of athletic sport, and played both cricket and football for the school. Though he afterwards dropped both these games, he developed as a sound tennis player, was a great walker, and found joy in swimming, like Byron and Swinburne, especially by night. He delighted in the Russian ballet and went again and again to a good Revue.

In 1906 he went up to King's College, Cambridge, where he made innumerable friends, and was considered one of the leading intellectuals of his day, among his peers being James Elroy Flecker, himself a poet of no small achievement, who died at Davos only a few months ago. Mr. Ivan Lake, the editor of the 'Bodleian', a contemporary at Cambridge, tells me that although the two men moved in different sets, they frequented the same literary circles. Brooke, however, seldom, if ever, spoke at the Union, but was a member of the Cambridge Fabian Society, and held the posts of Secretary and President in turn. His socialism was accompanied by a passing phase of vegetarianism, and with the ferment of youth working headily within him he could hardly escape the charge of being a crank, but "a crank, if a little thing, makes revolutions," and Brooke's youthful extravagances were utterly untinged with decadence. He took his classical tripos in 1909, and after spending some time as a student in Munich, returned to live near Cambridge at the Old Vicarage in "the lovely hamlet, Grantchester." "It was there," writes Mr. Raglan H. E. H. Somerset in a letter I am privileged to quote, "that I used to wake him on Sunday mornings to bathe in the dam above Byron's Pool. His bedroom was always littered with books, English, French, and German, in wild disorder. About his bathing one thing stands out; time after time he would try to dive; he always failed and came absolutely flat, but seemed to like it, although it must have hurt excessively." (This was only when he was learning. Later he became an accomplished diver.) "Then we used to go back and feed, sometimes in the Orchard and sometimes in the Old Vicarage Garden, on eggs and that particular brand of honey referred to in the 'Grantchester' poem. In those days he always dressed in the same way: cricket shirt and trousers and no stockings; in fact, 'Rupert's mobile toes' were a subject for the admiration of his friends."

Brooke occupied himself mainly with writing. Poems, remarkable for a happy spontaneity such as characterized the work of T. E. Brown, the Manx poet, appeared in the 'Gownsman', the 'Cambridge Review', the 'Nation', the 'English Review', and the 'Westminster Gazette'. Students of the "Problem Page" in the 'Saturday Westminster' knew him as a brilliant competitor who infused the purely academic with the very spirit of youth.

To all who knew him, the man himself was at least as important as his work. "As to his talk" — I quote again from Mr. Somerset — "he was a spendthrift. I mean that he never saved anything up as those writer fellows so often do. He was quite inconsequent and just rippled on, but was always ready to attack a careless thinker. On the other hand, he was extremely tolerant of fools, even bad poets who are the worst kind of fools — or rather the hardest to bear — but that was kindness of heart."

Of his personal appearance a good deal has been said. "One who knew him," writing in one of the daily papers, said that "to look at, he was part of the youth of the world. He was one of the handsomest Englishmen of his time. His moods seemed to be merely a disguise for the radiance of an early summer's day."

Mr. Edward Thomas speaks of him as "a golden young Apollo" who made friends, admirers, adorers, wherever he went. "He stretched himself out, drew his fingers through his waved fair hair, laughed, talked indolently, and admired as much as he was admired. . . . He was tall, broad, and easy in his movements. Either he stooped, or he thrust his head forward unusually much to look at you with his steady blue eyes."

On Mr. H. W. Nevinson, who, in a fleeting editorial capacity, sent for Brooke to come and discuss his poems, he made a similar impression:

"Suddenly he came — an astonishing apparition in any newspaper office: loose hair of deep, browny-gold; smooth, ruddy face; eyes not gray or bluish-white, but of living blue, really like the sky, and as frankly open; figure not very tall, but firm and strongly made, giving the sense of weight rather than of speed and yet so finely fashioned and healthy that it was impossible not to think of the line about 'a pard-like spirit'. He was dressed just in the ordinary way, except that he wore a low blue collar, and blue shirt and tie, all uncommon in those days. Evidently he did not want to be conspicuous, but the whole effect was almost ludicrously beautiful."

Notions of height are always comparative, and it will be noticed that Mr. Nevinson and Mr. Thomas differ in their ideas. Mr. Edward Marsh, however, Brooke's executor and one of his closest friends — indeed the friend of all young poets — tells me that he was about six feet, so that all doubt on this minor point may be set at rest.

He had been in Munich, Berlin, and in Italy, and in May, 1913, he left England again for a wander year, passing through the United States and Canada on his way to the South Seas. Perhaps some of those who met him in Boston and elsewhere will some day contribute their quota to the bright record of his life. His own letters to the 'Westminster Gazette', though naturally of unequal merit, were full of humorous delight in the New World. In one of his travel papers he described the city of Quebec as having "the radiance and repose of an immortal." "That, in so many words," wrote Mr. Walter de la Mare, "brings back his living remembrance. . . . With him there was a happy shining impression that he might have just come — that very moment — from another planet, one well within the solar system, but a little more like Utopia than ours." Not even Stevenson, it would seem, excited a greater enthusiasm among his friends; and between the two men an interesting parallel might be drawn. Brooke made a pilgrimage to Stevenson's home in Samoa, and his life in the Pacific found full and happy expression in his verse. His thoughts, however, turned longingly to England, the land "where Men with Splendid Hearts may go," and he reappeared from the ends of the earth among his friends as apparently little changed "as one who gaily and laughingly goes to bed and gaily and laughingly comes down next morning after a perfectly refreshing sleep."

Then came the War. "Well, if Armageddon's ON," he said, "I suppose one should be there." It was a characteristic way of putting it. He obtained a commission in the Hood Battalion of the Royal Naval Division in September, and was quickly ordered on the disastrous if heroic expedition to Antwerp. Here he had his first experience of war, lying for some days in trenches shelled by the distant German guns. Then followed a strange retreat by night along roads lit by the glare of burning towns, and swarming with pitiful crowds of Belgian refugees. Yet as Mr. Walter de la Mare said of him, when he returned from Antwerp, "Ulysses himself at the end of his voyagings was not more quietly accustomed to the shocks of novelty."

On Brooke, as on many other young men, to whom the gift of self-expression has perhaps been denied, the war had a swiftly maturing influence. Much of the impetuosity of youth fell away from him. The boy who had been rather proud of his independent views — a friend relates how at the age of twelve he sat on the platform at a pro-Boer meeting — grew suddenly, it seemed, into a man filled with the love of life indeed, but inspired most of all with the love of England. Fortunately for himself and for us, Brooke's patriotism found passionate voice in the sonnets which are rightly given pride of place in the 1914 section of this volume. Mr. Clement Shorter, who gives us the skeleton of a bibliography that is all too brief, draws special attention to 'New Numbers', a quarterly publication issued in Gloucestershire, to which Brooke contributed in February, April, August, and December of last year, his fellow poets being Lascelles Abercrombie, John Drinkwater, and Wilfrid Wilson Gibson. He spent the winter in training at Blandford Camp in Dorsetshire, and sailed with the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force on the last day of February. He had a presentiment of his death, but he went, as so many others have gone,

"Unstumbling, unreluctant, strong, unknowing, Borne by a will not his, that lifts, that grows, Sweeps out to darkness, triumphing in his goal, Out of the fire, out of the little room. . . . — There is an end appointed, O my soul!"

He never reached the Dardanelles. He went first to Lemnos and then to Egypt. Early in April he had a touch of sunstroke from which he recovered; but he died from blood-poisoning on board a French hospital ship at Scyros on Friday, April 23rd — died for England on the day of St. Michael and Saint George. He was buried at night, by torchlight, in an olive grove about a mile inland. "If you go there," writes Mr. Stephen Graham, "you will find a little wooden cross with just his name and the date of his birth and his death marked on it in black." A few days later the news of his death was published in the 'Times' with the following appreciation:

"W. S. C." writes: "Rupert Brooke is dead. A telegram from the Admiral at Lemnos tells us that this life has closed at the moment when it seemed to have reached its springtime. A voice had become audible, a note had been struck, more true, more thrilling, more able to do justice to the nobility of our youth in arms engaged in this present war, than any other — more able to express their thoughts of self-surrender, and with a power to carry comfort to those who watch them so intently from afar. The voice has been swiftly stilled. Only the echoes and the memory remain; but they will linger.

"During the last few months of his life, months of preparation in gallant comradeship and open air, the poet-soldier told with all the simple force of genius the sorrow of youth about to die, and the sure, triumphant consolations of a sincere and valiant spirit. He expected to die; he was willing to die for the dear England whose beauty and majesty he knew; and he advanced toward the brink in perfect serenity, with absolute conviction of the rightness of his country's cause and a heart devoid of hate for fellowmen.

"The thoughts to which he gave expression in the very few incomparable war sonnets which he has left behind will be shared by many thousands of young men moving resolutely and blithely forward into this, the hardest, the cruellest, and the least-rewarded of all the wars that men have fought. They are a whole history and revelation of Rupert Brooke himself. Joyous, fearless, versatile, deeply instructed, with classic symmetry of mind and body, ruled by high, undoubting purpose, he was all that one would wish England's noblest sons to be in days when no sacrifice but the most precious is acceptable, and the most precious is that which is most freely proffered."

"W. S. C.", as many probably guessed at the time, was the Rt. Hon. Winston Spencer Churchill, a personal friend and warm admirer of the poet. Many other tributes followed, notably from an anonymous writer in the 'Spectator', from Mr. Walter de la Mare, Mr. Edward Thomas, Mr. Holbrook Jackson, Mr. Jack Collings Squire, Mr. James Douglas, Mr. Drinkwater, Mr. Gibson, and Mr. Lascelles Abercrombie. From most of these writers I have already quoted at some length, but space must yet be found for the last three, the surviving members of the brilliant quartette who produced 'New Numbers'. Mr. Drinkwater wrote as follows: "There can have been no man of his years in England who had at once so impressive a personality and so inevitable an appeal to the affection of every one who knew him, while there has not been, I think, so grievous a loss to poetry since the death of Shelley. Some of us who knew him may live to be old men, but life is not likely to give us any richer memory than his; and the passion and shapely zest that are in his work will pass safely to the memory of posterity." Mr. Wilfrid Gibson's tribute took the form of a short poem called "The Going":

He's gone. I do not understand. I only know That, as he turned to go And waved his hand, In his young eyes a sudden glory shone, And I was dazzled by a sunset glow — And he was gone.

Mr. Lascelles Abercrombie, now perhaps the greatest of our younger poets and a warm personal friend of Brooke's, wrote at greater length:

"'And the worst friend and enemy is but Death' . . . 'And if these poor limbs die, safest of all.' So ended two of the five sonnets, with the common title '1914', which Rupert Brooke wrote while he was in training, between the Antwerp expedition and sailing for the Aegean. These sonnets are incomparably the finest utterance of English poetry concerning the Great War. We knew the splendid promise of Rupert Brooke's earlier poetry; these sonnets are the brief perfection of his achievement. They are much more than that: they are among the few supreme utterances of English patriotism. It was natural, perhaps, that they should leave all else that has been written about the war so far behind. It is not so much that they are the work of a talent scarcely, in its own way, to be equalled to-day; it was much more that they were the work of a poet who had for his material the feeling that he was giving up everything to fight for England — the feeling, I think, that he was giving his life for England. Reading these five sonnets now, it seems as if he had in them written his own epitaph. I believe he thought so himself; a few words he said in my last talk with him makes me believe that — now. At any rate, the history of literature, so full of Fate's exquisite ironies, has nothing more poignantly ironic, and nothing at the same time more beautifully appropriate, than the publication of Rupert Brooke's noble sonnet-sequence, '1914', a few swift weeks before the death they had imagined, and had already made lovely. Each one of these five sonnets faces, in a quiet exultation, the thought of death, of death for England; and understands, as seldom even English poetry has understood, the unspeakable beauty of the thought:

"These laid the world away; poured out the red Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene That men call age; and those who would have been, Their sons, they gave — their immortality.

I am strangely mistaken if the accent of the noblest English poetry does not speak to us in those lines. And again:

"If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England's breathing, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

"This — this music, this beauty, this courage — was Rupert Brooke. But it is, we may be sure, his immortality. It is not yet tolerable to speak of personal loss. The name seemed to stand for a magical vitality that must be safe — safe! Yes, 'and if these poor limbs die, safest of all!' What poetry has lost in him cannot be judged by any one who has not read those last sonnets, now his farewell to England and the world. I am not underrating the rest of his work. There was an intellectual keenness and brightness in it, a fire of imagery and (in the best sense) wit, the like of which had not been known, or known only in snatches, in our literature since the best days of the later Elizabethans. And it was all penetrated by a mastering passion, the most elemental of all passions — the passion for life. 'I have been so great a lover,' he cries, and artfully leads us on to think he means the usual passion of a young poet's career. But it is just life he loves, and not in any abstract sense, but all the infinite little familiar details of life catalogued with delighted jest. This was profoundly sincere: no one ever loved life more wholly or more minutely. And he celebrated his love exquisitely, often unforgettably, through all his earlier poetry, getting further intensity from a long sojourn in the South Seas. But this passion for life had never had seriously to fight for its rights and joys. Like all great lovers of life, he had pleased himself with the thought of death and after death: not insincerely, by any means, but simply because this gave a finer relish to the sense of being alive. Platonism, which offers delightful games for such subtle wit as his, he especially liked to play with. It was one more element in the life of here and now, the life of mortal thought and sense and spirit, infinitely varying and by him infinitely loved. And then came 1914; and his passion for life had suddenly to face the thought of voluntary death. But there was no struggle; for instantly the passion for life became one with the will to die — and now it has become death itself. But first Rupert Brooke had told the world once more how the passion for beautiful life may reach its highest passion and most radiant beauty when it is the determination to die."

Margaret Lavington.

London, October, 1915.



Addendum

Comprised of poems written in his memory by three poets contemporary to Rupert Brooke. A short poem by Mr. Gibson is already included in the Biographical Note; a set of four of his sonnets is included here. The poems are Public Domain.



In Memory of Rupert Brooke



In alien earth, across a troubled sea, His body lies that was so fair and young. His mouth is stopped, with half his songs unsung; His arm is still, that struck to make men free. But let no cloud of lamentation be Where, on a warrior's grave, a lyre is hung. We keep the echoes of his golden tongue, We keep the vision of his chivalry.

So Israel's joy, the loveliest of kings, Smote now his harp, and now the hostile horde. To-day the starry roof of Heaven rings With psalms a soldier made to praise his Lord; And David rests beneath Eternal wings, Song on his lips, and in his hand a sword.

—Joyce Kilmer, from 'Main Street and Other Poems', 1917.



Rupert Brooke



I

Your face was lifted to the golden sky Ablaze beyond the black roofs of the square As flame on flame leapt, flourishing in air Its tumult of red stars exultantly To the cold constellations dim and high: And as we neared the roaring ruddy flare Kindled to gold your throat and brow and hair Until you burned, a flame of ecstasy.

The golden head goes down into the night Quenched in cold gloom — and yet again you stand Beside me now with lifted face alight, As, flame to flame, and fire to fire you burn . . . Then, recollecting, laughingly you turn, And look into my eyes and take my hand.

II

Once in my garret — you being far away Tramping the hills and breathing upland air, Or so I fancied — brooding in my chair, I watched the London sunshine feeble and grey Dapple my desk, too tired to labour more, When, looking up, I saw you standing there Although I'd caught no footstep on the stair, Like sudden April at my open door.

Though now beyond earth's farthest hills you fare, Song-crowned, immortal, sometimes it seems to me That, if I listen very quietly, Perhaps I'll hear a light foot on the stair And see you, standing with your angel air, Fresh from the uplands of eternity.

III

Your eyes rejoiced in colour's ecstasy, Fulfilling even their uttermost desire, When, over a great sunlit field afire With windy poppies streaming like a sea Of scarlet flame that flaunted riotously Among green orchards of that western shire, You gazed as though your heart could never tire Of life's red flood in summer revelry.

And as I watched you, little thought had I How soon beneath the dim low-drifting sky Your soul should wander down the darkling way, With eyes that peer a little wistfully, Half-glad, half-sad, remembering, as they see Lethean poppies, shrivelling ashen grey.

IV

October chestnuts showered their perishing gold Over us as beside the stream we lay In the Old Vicarage garden that blue day, Talking of verse and all the manifold Delights a little net of words may hold, While in the sunlight water-voles at play Dived under a trailing crimson bramble-spray, And walnuts thudded ripe on soft black mould.

Your soul goes down unto a darker stream Alone, O friend, yet even in death's deep night Your eyes may grow accustomed to the dark And Styx for you may have the ripple and gleam Of your familiar river, and Charon's bark Tarry by that old garden of your delight.

—Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, 1916.



To Rupert Brooke



Though we, a happy few, Indubitably knew That from the purple came This poet of pure flame,

The world first saw his light Flash on an evil night, And heard his song from far Above the drone of war.

Out of the primal dark He leapt, like lyric lark, Singing his aubade strain; Then fell to earth again.

We garner all he gave, And on his hero grave, For love and honour strew, Rosemary, myrtle, rue.

Son of the Morning, we Had kept you thankfully; But yours the asphodel: Hail, singer, and farewell!

—Eden Phillpotts, from 'Plain Song, 1914-1916'.

THE END