Poems of Rupert Brooke [4]
The Fish Thoughts on the Shape of the Human Body Flight The Hill The One Before the Last The Jolly Company The Life Beyond Lines Written in the Belief That the Ancient Roman Festival of the Dead Was Called Ambarvalia Dead Men's Love Town and Country Paralysis Menelaus and Helen Libido Jealousy Blue Evening The Charm Finding Song The Voice Dining-Room Tea The Goddess in the Wood A Channel Passage Victory Day and Night
Experiments
Choriambics -- I Choriambics -- II Desertion
1914
I. Peace II. Safety III. The Dead IV. The Dead V. The Soldier The Treasure
The South Seas
Tiare Tahiti Retrospect The Great Lover Heaven Doubts There's Wisdom in Women He Wonders Whether to Praise or to Blame Her A Memory (From a sonnet-sequence) One Day Waikiki Hauntings Sonnet (Suggested by some of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research) Clouds Mutability
Other Poems
The Busy Heart Love Unfortunate The Chilterns Home The Night Journey Song Beauty and Beauty The Way That Lovers Use Mary and Gabriel The Funeral of Youth: Threnody
Grantchester
The Old Vicarage, Grantchester
1905-1908
Second Best
Here in the dark, O heart; Alone with the enduring Earth, and Night, And Silence, and the warm strange smell of clover; Clear-visioned, though it break you; far apart From the dead best, the dear and old delight; Throw down your dreams of immortality, O faithful, O foolish lover! Here's peace for you, and surety; here the one Wisdom -- the truth! -- "All day the good glad sun Showers love and labour on you, wine and song; The greenwood laughs, the wind blows, all day long Till night." And night ends all things. Then shall be No lamp relumed in heaven, no voices crying, Or changing lights, or dreams and forms that hover! (And, heart, for all your sighing, That gladness and those tears are over, over. . . .)
And has the truth brought no new hope at all, Heart, that you're weeping yet for Paradise? Do they still whisper, the old weary cries? "'MID YOUTH AND SONG, FEASTING AND CARNIVAL, THROUGH LAUGHTER, THROUGH THE ROSES, AS OF OLD COMES DEATH, ON SHADOWY AND RELENTLESS FEET, DEATH, UNAPPEASABLE BY PRAYER OR GOLD; DEATH IS THE END, THE END!" Proud, then, clear-eyed and laughing, go to greet Death as a friend!
Exile of immortality, strongly wise, Strain through the dark with undesirous eyes To what may lie beyond it. Sets your star, O heart, for ever! Yet, behind the night, Waits for the great unborn, somewhere afar, Some white tremendous daybreak. And the light, Returning, shall give back the golden hours, Ocean a windless level, Earth a lawn Spacious and full of sunlit dancing-places, And laughter, and music, and, among the flowers, The gay child-hearts of men, and the child-faces O heart, in the great dawn!
Day That I Have Loved
Tenderly, day that I have loved, I close your eyes, And smooth your quiet brow, and fold your thin dead hands. The grey veils of the half-light deepen; colour dies. I bear you, a light burden, to the shrouded sands,
Where lies your waiting boat, by wreaths of the sea's making Mist-garlanded, with all grey weeds of the water crowned. There you'll be laid, past fear of sleep or hope of waking; And over the unmoving sea, without a sound,
Faint hands will row you outward, out beyond our sight, Us with stretched arms and empty eyes on the far-gleaming And marble sand. . . . Beyond the shifting cold twilight, Further than laughter goes, or tears, further than dreaming, There'll be no port, no dawn-lit islands! But the drear Waste darkening, and, at length, flame ultimate on the deep. Oh, the last fire -- and you, unkissed, unfriended there! Oh, the lone way's red ending, and we not there to weep!
(We found you pale and quiet, and strangely crowned with flowers, Lovely and secret as a child. You came with us, Came happily, hand in hand with the young dancing hours, High on the downs at dawn!) Void now and tenebrous,
Experiments
Choriambics -- I Choriambics -- II Desertion
1914
I. Peace II. Safety III. The Dead IV. The Dead V. The Soldier The Treasure
The South Seas
Tiare Tahiti Retrospect The Great Lover Heaven Doubts There's Wisdom in Women He Wonders Whether to Praise or to Blame Her A Memory (From a sonnet-sequence) One Day Waikiki Hauntings Sonnet (Suggested by some of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research) Clouds Mutability
Other Poems
The Busy Heart Love Unfortunate The Chilterns Home The Night Journey Song Beauty and Beauty The Way That Lovers Use Mary and Gabriel The Funeral of Youth: Threnody
Grantchester
The Old Vicarage, Grantchester
1905-1908
Second Best
Here in the dark, O heart; Alone with the enduring Earth, and Night, And Silence, and the warm strange smell of clover; Clear-visioned, though it break you; far apart From the dead best, the dear and old delight; Throw down your dreams of immortality, O faithful, O foolish lover! Here's peace for you, and surety; here the one Wisdom -- the truth! -- "All day the good glad sun Showers love and labour on you, wine and song; The greenwood laughs, the wind blows, all day long Till night." And night ends all things. Then shall be No lamp relumed in heaven, no voices crying, Or changing lights, or dreams and forms that hover! (And, heart, for all your sighing, That gladness and those tears are over, over. . . .)
And has the truth brought no new hope at all, Heart, that you're weeping yet for Paradise? Do they still whisper, the old weary cries? "'MID YOUTH AND SONG, FEASTING AND CARNIVAL, THROUGH LAUGHTER, THROUGH THE ROSES, AS OF OLD COMES DEATH, ON SHADOWY AND RELENTLESS FEET, DEATH, UNAPPEASABLE BY PRAYER OR GOLD; DEATH IS THE END, THE END!" Proud, then, clear-eyed and laughing, go to greet Death as a friend!
Exile of immortality, strongly wise, Strain through the dark with undesirous eyes To what may lie beyond it. Sets your star, O heart, for ever! Yet, behind the night, Waits for the great unborn, somewhere afar, Some white tremendous daybreak. And the light, Returning, shall give back the golden hours, Ocean a windless level, Earth a lawn Spacious and full of sunlit dancing-places, And laughter, and music, and, among the flowers, The gay child-hearts of men, and the child-faces O heart, in the great dawn!
Day That I Have Loved
Tenderly, day that I have loved, I close your eyes, And smooth your quiet brow, and fold your thin dead hands. The grey veils of the half-light deepen; colour dies. I bear you, a light burden, to the shrouded sands,
Where lies your waiting boat, by wreaths of the sea's making Mist-garlanded, with all grey weeds of the water crowned. There you'll be laid, past fear of sleep or hope of waking; And over the unmoving sea, without a sound,
Faint hands will row you outward, out beyond our sight, Us with stretched arms and empty eyes on the far-gleaming And marble sand. . . . Beyond the shifting cold twilight, Further than laughter goes, or tears, further than dreaming, There'll be no port, no dawn-lit islands! But the drear Waste darkening, and, at length, flame ultimate on the deep. Oh, the last fire -- and you, unkissed, unfriended there! Oh, the lone way's red ending, and we not there to weep!
(We found you pale and quiet, and strangely crowned with flowers, Lovely and secret as a child. You came with us, Came happily, hand in hand with the young dancing hours, High on the downs at dawn!) Void now and tenebrous,