Rupert Brooke

The damned ship lurched and slithered. Quiet and quick My cold gorge rose; the long sea rolled; I knew I must think hard of something, or be sick;

Sir, since the last Elizabethan died, Or, rather, that more Paradisal muse, Blind with much light, passed to the light more glorious

Somewhile before the dawn I rose, and stept Softly along the dim way to your room, And found you sleeping in the quiet gloom,

When love has changed to kindliness, Oh, love, our hungry lips, that press So tight that Time's an old god's dream

Before thy shrine I kneel, an unknown worshipper, Chanting strange hymns to thee and sorrowful litanies, Incense of dirges, prayers that are as holy myrrh.

When Beauty and Beauty meet All naked, fair to fair, The earth is crying-sweet,

My restless blood now lies a-quiver, Knowing that always, exquisitely, This April twilight on the river

Ah! not now, when desire burns, and the wind calls, and the suns of spring Light-foot dance in the woods, whisper of life, woo me to wayfaring; Ah! not now should you come, now when the road beckons, and good friends call,

Here the flame that was ash, shrine that was void, lost in the haunted wood, I have tended and loved, year upon year, I in the solitude Waiting, quiet and glad-eyed in the dark, knowing that once a gleam

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

(From the train between Bologna and Milan, second class.) Opposite me two Germans snore and sweat. Through sullen swirling gloom we jolt and roar.

Through my heart's palace Thoughts unnumbered throng; And there, most quiet and, as a child, most wise, High-throned you sit, and gracious. All day long

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.

There was a damned successful Poet; There was a Woman like the Sun. And they were dead. They did not know it.

So light we were, so right we were, so fair faith shone, And the way was laid so certainly, that, when I'd gone, What dumb thing looked up at you? Was it something heard,

When you were there, and you, and you, Happiness crowned the night; I too, Laughing and looking, one of all,

When she sleeps, her soul, I know, Goes a wanderer on the air, Wings where I may never go,

When the white flame in us is gone, And we that lost the world's delight Stiffen in darkness, left alone

Stars that seem so close and bright, Watched by lovers through the night, Swim in emptiness, men say,

Because God put His adamantine fate Between my sullen heart and its desire, I swore that I would burst the Iron Gate,

From the candles and dumb shadows, And the house where love had died, I stole to the vast moonlight

Voices out of the shade that cried, And long noon in the hot calm places, And children's play by the wayside,

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,

There is an evil which that Race attaints Who represent God's World with oily paints, Who mock the Universe, so rare and sweet,

In the grey tumult of these after years Oft silence falls; the incessant wranglers part; And less-than-echoes of remembered tears

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;

Fish (fly-replete, in depth of June, Dawdling away their wat'ry noon) Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear,

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

Lo! from quiet skies In through the window my Lord the Sun! And my eyes

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,

When I see you, who were so wise and cool, Gazing with silly sickness on that fool You’ve given your love to, your adoring hands

When love has changed to kindliness, Oh, love, our hungry lips, that press So tight that Time's an old god's dream

How should I know? The enormous wheels of will Drove me cold-eyed on tired and sleepless feet. Night was void arms and you a phantom still,

Swings the way still by hollow and hill, And all the world's a song; "She's far," it sings me, "but fair," it rings me,

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.

Young Mary, loitering once her garden way, Felt a warm splendour grow in the April day, As wine that blushes water through. And soon,

I Hot through Troy's ruin Menelaus broke To Priam's palace, sword in hand, to sate

As those of old drank mummia To fire their limbs of lead, Making dead kings from Africa

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,

Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour, And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping, With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,

Oh! Death will find me, long before I tire Of watching you; and swing me suddenly Into the shade and loneliness and mire

(The Priests within the Temple) She was wrinkled and huge and hideous? She was our Mother. She was lustful and lewd? but a God; we had none other.

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,

For moveless limbs no pity I crave, That never were swift! Still all I prize, Laughter and thought and friends, I have;

Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour, And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping, With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,

I'd watched the sorrow of the evening sky, And smelt the sea, and earth, and the warm clover, And heard the waves, and the seagull's mocking cry.

In your arms was still delight, Quiet as a street at night; And thoughts of you, I do remember,

Dear! of all happy in the hour, most blest He who has found our hid security, Assured in the dark tides of the world that rest,

Swiftly out from the friendly lilt of the band, The crowd's good laughter, the loved eyes of men, I am drawn nightward; I must turn again

Here in the dark, O heart; Alone with the enduring Earth, and Night, And Silence, and the warm strange smell of clover;

They sleep within. . . . I cower to the earth, I waking, I only. High and cold thou dreamest, O queen, high-dreaming and lonely.

Sometimes even now I may Steal a prisoner's holiday, Slip, when all is worst, the bands,

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

"Oh! Love," they said, "is King of Kings, And Triumph is his crown. Earth fades in flame before his wings,

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

Hand trembling towards hand; the amazing lights Of heart and eye. They stood on supreme heights. Ah, the delirious weeks of honeymoon!

I said I splendidly loved you; it's not true. Such long swift tides stir not a land-locked sea. On gods or fools the high risk falls, on you,

Oh! Death will find me, long before I tire Of watching you; and swing me suddenly Into the shade and loneliness and mire

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,

I think if you had loved me when I wanted; If I'd looked up one day, and seen your eyes, And found my wild sick blasphemous prayer granted,

Some day I shall rise and leave my friends And seek you again through the world's far ends, You whom I found so fair

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)

Out of the nothingness of sleep, The slow dreams of Eternity, There was a thunder on the deep:

In darkness the loud sea makes moan; And earth is shaken, and all evils creep About her ways.

Your hands, my dear, adorable, Your lips of tenderness Oh, I've loved you faithfully and well,

As the Wind, and as the Wind, In a corner of the way, Goes stepping, stands twirling,

Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead! There’s none of these so lonely and poor of old, But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.

These hearts were woven of human joys and cares, Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth. The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,

In a cool curving world he lies And ripples with dark ecstasies. The kind luxurious lapse and steal

The day that YOUTH had died, There came to his grave-side, In decent mourning, from the country's ends,

In a flowered dell the Lady Venus stood, Amazed with sorrow. Down the morning one Far golden horn in the gold of trees and sun

I have been so great a lover: filled my days So proudly with the splendour of Love's praise, The pain, the calm, and the astonishment,

Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill, Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass. You said, "Through glory and ecstasy we pass;

The stars, a jolly company, I envied, straying late and lonely; And cried upon their revelry:

He wakes, who never thought to wake again, Who held the end was Death. He opens eyes Slowly, to one long livid oozing plain

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,

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,

Just now the lilac is in bloom, All before my little room; And in my flower-beds, I think,

I dreamt I was in love again With the One Before the Last, And smiled to greet the pleasant pain

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

(Sung, on one night, in the cities, in the darkness.) Come away! Come away! Ye are sober and dull through the common day,

(Halted around the fire by night, after moon-set, they sing this beneath the trees.) What light of unremembered skies Hast thou relumed within our eyes,

When colour goes home into the eyes, And lights that shine are shut again With dancing girls and sweet birds' cries

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

Slowly up silent peaks, the white edge of the world, Trod four archangels, clear against the unheeding sky, Bearing, with quiet even steps, and great wings furled,

Safe in the magic of my woods I lay, and watched the dying light. Faint in the pale high solitudes,

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

Is it the hour? We leave this resting-place Made fair by one another for a while. Now, for a god-speed, one last mad embrace;

"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;

How can we find? how can we rest? how can We, being gods, win joy, or peace, being man? We, the gaunt zanies of a witless Fate,

Mamua, when our laughter ends, And hearts and bodies, brown as white, Are dust about the doors of friends,

Here, where love's stuff is body, arm and side Are stabbing-sweet 'gainst chair and lamp and wall. In every touch more intimate meanings hide;

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.

All night the ways of Heaven were desolate, Long roads across a gleaming empty sky. Outcast and doomed and driven, you and I,

Creeps in half wanton, half asleep, One with a fat wide hairless face. He likes love-music that is cheap;

Warm perfumes like a breath from vine and tree Drift down the darkness. Plangent, hidden from eyes Somewhere an 'eukaleli' thrills and cries