Rupert Brooke

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, And your brown face, that’s full

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 laid the world away; poured out

My restless blood now lies a-quiver, Knowing that always, exquisitely, This April twilight on the river Stirs anguish in the heart of me. For the fast world in that rare glimmer Puts on the

Because God put His adamantine fate Between my sullen heart and its desire, I swore that I would burst the Iron Gate, Rise up, and curse Him on His throne of fire. Earth shuddered

“Oh! Love,” they said, “is King of Kings, And Triumph is his crown. Earth fades in flame before his wings, And Sun and Moon bow down.” But that, I knew, would never do; And

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

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

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

“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

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.

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

The Way that lovers use is this; They bow, catch hands, with never a word, And their lips meet, and they do kiss, ВЂ”So I have heard. They queerly find some healing so, And

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, And day your far light swaying down the

As those of old drank mummia To fire their limbs of lead, Making dead kings from Africa Stand pandar to their bed; Drunk on the dead, and medicined With spiced imperial dust, In a

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. And in them all was only the

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

Now, God be thanked Who has watched us with His hour, And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping, With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power, To turn, as swimmers into

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

For moveless limbs no pity I crave, That never were swift! Still all I prize, Laughter and thought and friends, I have; No fool to heave luxurious sighs For the woods and hills that

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, “Quiet,” it laughs, “and strong!” Oh! spite of the miles

(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.

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; And flaming brains are the white heart of all. Here,

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

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 Where, down beyond the low untrodden strand, There

Safe in the magic of my woods I lay, and watched the dying light. Faint in the pale high solitudes, And washed with rain and veiled by night, Silver and blue and green were

Oh! Death will find me, long before I tire Of watching you; and swing me suddenly Into the shade and loneliness and mire Of the last land! There, waiting patiently, One day, I think,

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, To turn, as swimmers into

Mamua, when our laughter ends, And hearts and bodies, brown as white, Are dust about the doors of friends, Or scent ablowing down the night, Then, oh! then, the wise agree, Comes our immortality.

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

From the candles and dumb shadows, And the house where love had died, I stole to the vast moonlight And the whispering life outside. But I found no lips of comfort, No home in

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

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; The long road then, unlit by your faint smile. Ah!

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 Great Hopes gold-armoured, jester Fantasies, And pilgrim Dreams, and

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,

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 (Touch of your hands and smell of your hair!), My

In a cool curving world he lies And ripples with dark ecstasies. The kind luxurious lapse and steal Shapes all his universe to feel And know and be; the clinging stream Closes his memory,

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

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 The clean clear bitter-sweet that’s not

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; Wind, sun, and earth remain, and birds sing still,

When you were there, and you, and you, Happiness crowned the night; I too, Laughing and looking, one of all, I watched the quivering lamplight fall On plate and flowers and pouring tea And

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

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, And heard our word, ‘Who is so safe

Out of the nothingness of sleep, The slow dreams of Eternity, There was a thunder on the deep: I came, because you called to me. I broke the Night’s primeval bars, I dared the