The Pacific, 1914
Sonnet (Suggested by some of the Proceedingsof the Society for Psychical Research)
Not with vain tears, when we're beyond the sun,We'll beat on the substantial doors, nor treadThose dusty high-roads of the aimless deadPlaintive for Earth; but rather turn and runDown some close-covered by-way of the air,Some low sweet alley between wind and wind,Stoop under faint gleams, thread the shadows, findSome whispering ghost-forgotten nook, and thereSpend in pure converse our eternal day;Think each in each, immediately wise;Learn all we lacked before; hear, know, and sayWhat this tumultuous body now denies;And feel, who have laid our groping hands away;And see, no longer blinded by our eyes.
Down the blue night the unending columns pressIn noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow,Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snowUp 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 knowTheir benediction empty as they bless.They say that the Dead die not, but remainNear 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
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
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 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 cryingOf credulous hearts, in heaven — such are but takingTheir own poor dreams within their arms, and lyingEach 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.
Heart, you are restless as a paper scrapThat's tossed down dusty pavements by the wind;Saying, "She is most wise, patient and kind.Between the small hands folded in her lapSurely a shamed head may bow down at length,And find forgiveness where the shadows stirAbout 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 airThe gates of peace, and take my tiredness home,Kinder than God. But, heart, she will not care.
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 WendoverBy 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 lieForgotten 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 findThe best of my desires;The autumn road, the mellow windThat 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.
I came back late and tired last nightInto my little room,To the long chair and the firelightAnd comfortable gloom.But as I entered softly inI saw a woman there,The line of neck and cheek and chin,The darkness of her hair,The form of one I did not knowSitting in my chair.I stood a moment fierce and still,Watching her neck and hair.I made a step to her; and sawThat there was no one there.It was some trick of the firelightThat made me see her there.It was a chance of shade and lightAnd 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 creepFrom wall to basin, round the room,All night I could not sleep.
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 eyesGlares the imperious mystery of the way.Thirsty for dark, you feel the long-limbed trainThrob, 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, moveSure 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 gloomIs 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.
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.
When Beauty and Beauty meetAll 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 befallAfter — 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 yearsAfter — after —
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.
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 graceRounding 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 knowIt was not hers. She felt a trembling stirWithin her body, a will too strong for herThat held and filled and mastered all. With eyesClosed, and a thousand soft short broken sighs,She gave submission; fearful, meek, and glad. . . .She wished to speak. Under her breasts she hadSuch multitudinous burnings, to and fro,And throbs not understood; she did not knowIf they were hurt or joy for her; but onlyThat she was grown strange to herself, half lonely,All wonderful, filled full of pains to comeAnd 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 relateHer 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 eyesGazing 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 felicityWith 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 moreAnd at length hers?Being tired, she bowed her head;And said, "So be it!"The great wings were spreadShowering glory on the fields, and fire.The whole air, singing, bore him up, and higher,Unswerving, unreluctant. Soon he shoneA gold speck in the gold skies; then was gone.The air was colder, and grey. She stood alone.
The day that YOUTH had died,There came to his grave-side,In decent mourning, from the country's ends,Those scatter'd friendsWho 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 timeWhen YOUTH kept open house,Nor left untastedAught 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 tannedAnd 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 wedHer 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 catchOld 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 childAnd 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.
(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 youA tunnel of green gloom, and sleepDeeply above; and green and deepThe stream mysterious glides beneath,Green as a dream and deep as death.— Oh, damn! I know it! and I knowHow the May fields all golden show,And when the day is young and sweet,Gild gloriously the bare feetThat run to bathe . . .'Du lieber Gott!'Here am I, sweating, sick, and hot,And there the shadowed waters freshLean up to embrace the naked flesh.Temperamentvoll German JewsDrink beer around; — and THERE the dewsAre soft beneath a morn of gold.Here tulips bloom as they are told;Unkempt about those hedges blowsAn English unofficial rose;And there the unregulated sunSlopes down to rest when day is done,And wakes a vague unpunctual star,A slippered Hesper; and there areMeads towards Haslingfield and CotonWhere das Betreten's not verboten.ei'/qe genoi/mhn . . . would I were *In Grantchester, in Grantchester! —Some, it may be, can get in touchWith Nature there, or Earth, or such.And clever modern men have seenA 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 lieDay long and watch the Cambridge sky,And, flower-lulled in sleepy grass,Hear the cool lapse of hours pass,Until the centuries blend and blurIn Grantchester, in Grantchester. . . .Still in the dawnlit waters coolHis ghostly Lordship swims his pool,And tries the strokes, essays the tricks,Long learnt on Hellespont, or Styx.Dan Chaucer hears his river stillChatter 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 goOn lissom, clerical, printless toe;And oft between the boughs is seenThe sly shade of a Rural Dean . . .Till, at a shiver in the skies,Vanishing with Satanic cries,The prim ecclesiastic routLeaves 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-nuGod! 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 preferThe lovely hamlet Grantchester.For Cambridge people rarely smile,Being urban, squat, and packed with guile;And Royston men in the far SouthAre 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 partsHave 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 believeAt 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 creepRound 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 stirAcross the moon at Grantchester!To smell the thrilling-sweet and rottenUnforgettable, unforgottenRiver-smell, and hear the breezeSobbing in the little trees.Say, do the elm-clumps greatly standStill guardians of that holy land?The chestnuts shade, in reverend dream,The yet unacademic stream?Is dawn a secret shy and coldAnadyomene, silver-gold?And sunset still a golden seaFrom 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 stillUnder the mill, under the mill?Say, is there Beauty yet to find?And Certainty? and Quiet kind?Deep meadows yet, for to forgetThe lies, and truths, and pain? . . . oh! yetStands the Church clock at ten to three?And is there honey still for tea?
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 nightTen, 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.
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
I strayed about the deck, an hour, to-nightUnder a cloudy moonless sky; and peepedIn 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. StillNo 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 firmnessAnd link'd beauty of bodies, and pity thatThis gay machine of splendour 'ld soon be broken,Thought little of, pashed, scattered, . . .Only, always,I could but see them—against the lamplight—passLike 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 dieTo other ghosts—this one, or that or I.April 1915.
The Dance
A SongAs 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 mornWith 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 maySteal a prisoner's holiday,Slip, when all is worst, the bands,Hurry back, and duck beneathTime's old tyrannous groping hands,Speed away with laughing breathBack 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 cleanWhere the best was safe, I knew,And laughter in the gold and green,And song, and friends, and ever youWith 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 swearAll of earth for ever well—Careless lips and flying hair,And little things I may not tell.It does but double the heart-acheWhen I wake, when I wake.1912 (?).
Sonnet: in Time of Revolt
The Thing must End. I am no boy! I amNo BOY! I being twenty-one. Uncle, you makeA great mistake, a very great mistake,In chiding me for letting slip a "Damn!"What's more, you called me "Mother's one ewelamb,"Bade me "refrain from swearing—for her sake—Till I'm grown up" . . . —By God! I think youtakeToo 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 suppressThis 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 gloriousOr deeper blindness, no man's hand, as thine,Has, on the world's most noblest chord of song,Struck certain magic strains. Ears satiateWith the clamorous, timorous whisperings of to-day,Thrilled to perceive once more the spacious voiceAnd serene utterance of old. We heard—With rapturous breath half-held, as a dreamer dreamsWho 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 polysyllablesMultitudinously 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, nowI sometimes think no poetry is readSave 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 sickOf 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, mythsIncomprehensible at evening,And symbols that mean nothing in the dawn.The slow lines swell. The new styles sighs. The CeltMoans round with many voices.God! to seeGaunt 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 loversStretching luxuriously to the stars,All prouder pronouns than the dawn, and allThe thunder of the trumpets of the noun!January 1911.
There is an evil which that Race attaintsWho 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 GoodBy scrawling upon little bits of wood.They'd snare the moon, and catch the immortal sunWith madder brown and pale vermilion,Entrap an English evening's magic hush . . .
They say when the Great Prompter's hand shall ringDown the last curtain upon earth and sea,All the Good Mimes will have eternityTo praise their Author, worship love and sing;Or to the walls of Heaven wanderingLook down on those damned for a fretful d——,Mock them (all theologians agreeOn this reward for virtue), laugh, and flingNew 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 lightsOf 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 wentCityward daily; still she did abideAt home. And both were really quite contentWith 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 heardFrom her Romeo over the Styx;And the Roman will tell Cleopatra in hellWhen she starts her immortal old tricks;What Paris was tellin' for good-bye to HelenWhen 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 ThorAnd 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 incipiebo1, sedere facebo2,"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!" heCried, 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 babies3,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 hullabalooAs 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.
1 (return)[ Now we're off]
2 (return)[ I'll make them sit up.]
3 (return)[ Pronounce either to suit rhyme.]
London, October, 1915.
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,