Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke

Rupert Brooke

• Publisher: pubOne.info
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9782819924210

pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. consisting of poems ABOUT or TO Rupert Brooke.

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...

Table of contents

• THE COLLECTED POEMS OF RUPERT BROOKE
• Introduction
• 1905-1908
• Day That I Have Loved
• Sleeping Out: Full Moon
• In Examination
• Pine-Trees and the Sky: Evening
• Wagner
• The Vision of the Archangels
• Seaside
• On the Death of Smet-Smet, the Hippopotamus-Goddess
• The Song of the Pilgrims
• The Song of the Beasts
• Failure
• Ante Aram
• Dawn
• The Call
• The Wayfarers
• The Beginning
• 1908-1911
• Sonnet: “I said I splendidly loved you; it's not true”
• Success
• Dust
• Kindliness
• Mummia
• The Fish
• Thoughts on the Shape of the Human Body
• Flight
• The Hill
• The One Before the Last
• The Jolly Company
• The Life Beyond
• 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 — II
• Desertion
• 1914
• II. Safety
• III. The Dead
• IV. The Dead
• V. The Soldier
• The Treasure
• The South Seas
• 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
• Clouds
• Mutability
• Other Poems
• 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
• Fafaia
• Appendix
• Fragment
• Fragment on Painters
• The True Beatitude (Bouts-Rimes)
• [End of Poems.]
• Rupert Brooke: A Biographical Note
• Addendum
• In Memory of Rupert Brooke
• Rupert Brooke
• To Rupert Brooke
• Copyright