path: root/48306-0.txt

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 48306 ***

Produced by Al Haines.





                            *Selected Poems*


                           *by Rupert Brooke*



                                 London
                        Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd.
                            3 Adam St., W.C.
                                  1922




                       First Edition, March 1917
                     Second Impression, April 1917
                       Third Impression, May 1918
                    Fourth Impression, February 1919
                     Fifth Impression, January 1920
                     Sixth Impression, January 1922

                          All rights reserved




*Contents*

Day that I have Loved
On the Death of Smet-Smet, the Hippopotamus-Goddess
Second Best
The Hill
Sonnet ("Oh! Death will find me")
Dust
Song
Kindliness
The Voice
Menelaus and Helen
The Jolly Company
Thoughts on the Shape of the Human Body
Town and Country
The Fish
Dining-room Tea
The Old Vicarage, Grantchester
The Funeral of Youth
Beauty and Beauty
The Chilterns
Love
The Busy Heart
He Wonders Whether to Praise or Blame Her
Hauntings
One Day
Sonnet (_Suggested by some of the Proceedings
of the Society for Psychical Research_)
Clouds
Mutability
Heaven
Tiare Tahiti
Retrospect
The Great Lover
The Treasure
1914:
   I. Peace
   II. Safety
   III. The Dead
   IV. The Dead
   V. The Soldier




                        *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,

    The grey sands curve before me....
        From the inland meadows,
      Fragrant of June and clover, floats the dark and fills
    The hollow sea’s dead face with little creeping shadows,
      And the white silence brims the hollow of the hills.

    Close in the nest is folded every weary wing,
      Hushed all the joyful voices, and we, who held you dear,
    Eastward we turn and homeward, alone, remembering...
      Day that I loved, day that I loved, the Night is here!




                    *On the Death of Smet-Smet, the
                         Hippopotamus-Goddess*

                SONG OF A TRIBE OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS

                   (_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.
    In the day She was hidden and dumb, but at nightfall moaned in
            the shade;
    We shuddered and gave Her Her will in the darkness; we were
            afraid.

    (_The People without_)

    She sent us pain,
      And we bowed before Her;
    She smiled again
      And bade us adore Her.
    She solaced our woe
      And soothed our sighing;
    And what shall we do
      Now God is dying?

    (_The Priests within_)

    She was hungry and ate our children;—how should we stay Her?
    She took our young men and our maidens;—ours to obey Her.
    We were loathed and mocked and reviled of all nations; that was
            our pride.
    She fed us, protected us, loved us, and killed us; now She has
            died.

    (_The People without_)

    She was so strong;
      But Death is stronger.
    She ruled us long;
      But Time is longer.
    She solaced our woe
      And soothed our sighing;
    And what shall we do
      Now God is dying?




                             *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!




                               *The Hill*

    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, the birds sing still,
      When we are old, are old...."  "And when we die
    All’s over that is ours; and life burns on
      Through other lovers, other lips," said I,
    —"Heart of my heart, our heaven is now, is won!"

    "We are Earth’s best, that learnt her lesson here.
      Life is our cry.  We have kept the faith!" we said;
      "We shall go down with unreluctant tread
    Rose-crowned into the darkness!" ... Proud we were,
    And laughed, that had such brave true things to say.
    —And then you suddenly cried, and turned away.




                                *Sonnet*

    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, I’ll feel a cool wind blowing,
      See a slow light across the Stygian tide,
    And hear the Dead about me stir, unknowing,
      And tremble.  And _I_ shall know that you have died,

    And watch you, a broad-browed and smiling dream,
      Pass, light as ever, through the lightless host,
    Quietly ponder, start, and sway, and gleam—
      Most individual and bewildering ghost!—

    And turn, and toss your brown delightful head,
    Amusedly, among the ancient Dead.




                                 *Dust*

    When the white flame in us is gone,
      And we that lost the world’s delight
    Stiffen in darkness, left alone
      To crumble in our separate night;

    When your swift hair is quiet in death,
      And through the lips corruption thrust
    Has stilled the labour of my breath—
      When we are dust, when we are dust!—

    Not dead, not undesirous yet,
      Still sentient, still unsatisfied,
    We’ll ride the air, and shine, and flit,
      Around the places where we died,

    And dance as dust before the sun,
      And light of foot, and unconfined,
    Hurry from road to road, and run
      About the errands of the wind.

    And every mote, on earth or air,
      Will speed and gleam, down later days,
    And like a secret pilgrim fare
      By eager and invisible ways,

    Nor ever rest, nor ever lie,
      Till, beyond thinking, out of view,
    One mote of all the dust that’s I
      Shall meet one atom that was you.

    Then in some garden hushed from wind,
      Warm in a sunset’s afterglow,
    The lovers in the flowers will find
      A sweet and strange unquiet grow

    Upon the peace; and, past desiring,
      So high a beauty in the air,
    And such a light, and such a quiring,
      And such a radiant ecstasy there,

    They’ll know not if it’s fire, or dew,
      Or out of earth, or in the height,
    Singing, or flame, or scent, or hue,
      Or two that pass, in light, to light,

    Out of the garden, higher, higher...
      But in that instant they shall learn
    The shattering ecstasy of our fire,
      And the weak passionless hearts will burn

    And faint in that amazing glow,
      Until the darkness close above;
    And they will know—poor fools, they’ll know!—
      One moment, what it is to love.




                                 *Song*

    "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 Heaven is all too high.
    So whenever I meet a Queen, I said,
      I will not catch her eye.

    "Oh!  Love," they said, and "Love," they said,

    "The gift of Love is this;
    A crown of thorns about thy head,
      And vinegar to thy kiss!"—
    But Tragedy is not for me;
      And I’m content to be gay.
    So whenever I spied a Tragic Lady,
      I went another way.

    And so I never feared to see
      You wander down the street,
    Or come across the fields to me
      On ordinary feet.
    For what they’d never told me of,
      And what I never knew,
    It was that all the time, my love,
      Love would be merely you.




                              *Kindliness*

    When love has changed to kindliness—
    Oh, love, our hungry lips, that press
    So tight that Time’s an old god’s dream
    Nodding in heaven, and whisper stuff
    Seven million years were not enough
    To think on after, make it seem
    Less than the breath of children playing,
    A blasphemy scarce worth the saying,
    A sorry jest, "When love has grown
    To kindliness—to kindliness!" ...
    And yet—the best that either’s known
    Will change, and wither, and be less,
    At last, than comfort, or its own
    Remembrance.  And when some caress
    Tendered in habit (once a flame
    All heaven sang out to) wakes the shame
    Unworded, in the steady eyes
    We’ll have,—_that_ day, what shall we do?
    Being so noble, kill the two
    Who’ve reached their second-best?  Being wise,
    Break cleanly off, and get away,
    Follow down other windier skies
    New lures, alone?  Or shall we stay,
    Since this is all we’ve known, content
    In the lean twilight of such day,
    And not remember, not lament?
    That time when all is over, and
    Hand never flinches, brushing hand;
    And blood lies quiet, for all you’re near;
    And it’s but spoken words we hear,
    Where trumpets sang; when the mere skies
    Are stranger and nobler than your eyes;
    And flesh is flesh, was flame before;
    And infinite hungers leap no more
    In the chance swaying of your dress;
    And love has changed to kindliness.




                              *The Voice*

    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 showing.
      And the dark woods grew darker still;
    And birds were hushed; and peace was growing;
      And quietness crept up the hill;

    And no wind was blowing ...

    And I knew
    That this was the hour of knowing,
    And the night and the woods and you
    Were one together, and I should find
    Soon in the silence the hidden key
    Of all that had hurt and puzzled me—
    Why you were you, and the night was kind,
    And the woods were part of the heart of me.

    And there I waited breathlessly,
    Alone; and slowly the holy three,
    The three that I loved, together grew
    One, in the hour of knowing,
    Night, and the woods, and you——

    And suddenly
    There was an uproar in my woods,
    The noise of a fool in mock distress,
    Crashing and laughing and blindly going,
    Of ignorant feet and a swishing dress,
    And a Voice profaning the solitudes.

    The spell was broken, the key denied me.
    And at length your flat clear voice beside me
    Mouthed cheerful clear flat platitudes.

    You came and quacked beside me in the wood.
    You said, "The view from here is very good!"
    You said, "It’s nice to be alone a bit!"
    And, "How the days are drawing out!" you said.
    You said, "The sunset’s pretty, isn’t it?"

    *      *      *      *      *

    By God!  I wish—I wish that you were dead!




                          *Menelaus and Helen*

                                  *I*

    Hot through Troy’s ruin Menelaus broke
      To Priam’s palace, sword in hand, to sate
      On that adulterous whore a ten years’ hate
    And a king’s honour.  Through red death, and smoke,
    And cries, and then by quieter ways he strode,
      Till the still innermost chamber fronted him.
      He swung his sword, and crashed into the dim
    Luxurious bower, flaming like a god.

    High sat white Helen, lonely and serene.
      He had not remembered that she was so fair,
    And that her neck curved down in such a way;
    And he felt tired.  He flung the sword away,
      And kissed her feet, and knelt before her there,
    The perfect Knight before the perfect Queen.


                                  *II*

    So far the poet.  How should he behold
      That journey home, the long connubial years?
      He does not tell you how white Helen bears
    Child on legitimate child, becomes a scold,
    Haggard with virtue.  Menelaus bold
      Waxed garrulous, and sacked a hundred Troys
      ’Twixt noon and supper.  And her golden voice
    Got shrill as he grew deafer.  And both were old.

    Often he wonders why on earth he went
      Troyward, or why poor Paris ever came.
    Oft she weeps, gummy-eyed and impotent;
      Her dry shanks twitch at Paris’ mumbled name.
    So Menelaus nagged; and Helen cried;
      And Paris slept on by Scamander side.




                          *The Jolly Company*

    The stars, a jolly company,
      I envied, straying late and lonely;
    And cried upon their revelry:
      "O white companionship!  You only
    In love, in faith unbroken dwell,
    Friends radiant and inseparable!"

    Light-heart and glad they seemed to me
      And merry comrades (even so
    _God out of Heaven may laugh to see_
      _The happy crowds; and never know_
    _That in his lone obscure distress_
    _Each walketh in a wilderness)_.

    But I, remembering, pitied well
      And loved them, who, with lonely light,
    In empty infinite spaces dwell,
      Disconsolate.  For, all the night,
    I heard the thin gnat-voices cry,
    Star to faint star, across the sky.




               *Thoughts on the Shape of the Human Body*

    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,
    Who love the unloving, and the lover hate,
    Forget the moment ere the moment slips,
    Kiss with blind lips that seek beyond the lips,
    Who want, and know not what we want, and cry
    With crooked mouths for Heaven, and throw it by.
    Love’s for completeness!  No perfection grows
    ’Twixt leg, and arm, elbow, and ear, and nose,
    And joint, and socket; but unsatisfied
    Sprawling desires, shapeless, perverse, denied.
    Finger with finger wreathes; we love, and gape,
    Fantastic shape to mazed fantastic shape,
    Straggling, irregular, perplexed, embossed,
    Grotesquely twined, extravagantly lost
    By crescive paths and strange protuberant ways
    From sanity and from wholeness and from grace.
    How can love triumph, how can solace be,
    Where fever turns toward fever, knee toward knee?
    Could we but fill to harmony, and dwell
    Simple as our thought and as perfectible,
    Rise disentangled from humanity
    Strange whole and new into simplicity,
    Grow to a radiant round love, and bear
    Unfluctuant passion for some perfect sphere,
    Love moon to moon unquestioning, and be
    Like the star Lunisequa, steadfastly
    Following the round clear orb of her delight,
    Patiently ever, through the eternal night!




                           *Town and Country*

    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, million pulses to one centre beat:
      Closed in by men’s vast friendliness, alone,
    Two can be drunk with solitude, and meet
      On the sheer point where sense with knowing’s one.

    Here the green-purple clanging royal night,
      And the straight lines and silent walls of town,
    And roar, and glare, and dust, and myriad white
      Undying passers, pinnacle and crown

    Intensest heavens between close-lying faces
      By the lamp’s airless fierce ecstatic fire;
    And we’ve found love in little hidden places,
      Under great shades, between the mist and mire.

    Stay! though the woods are quiet, and you’ve heard
      Night creep along the hedges.  Never go
    Where tangled foliage shrouds the crying bird,
      And the remote winds sigh, and waters flow!

    Lest—as our words fall dumb on windless noons,
      Or hearts grow hushed and solitary, beneath
    Unheeding stars and unfamiliar moons,
      Or boughs bend over, close and quiet as death,—

    Unconscious and unpassionate and still,
      Cloud-like we lean and stare as bright leaves stare,
    And gradually along the stranger hill
      Our unwalled loves thin out on vacuous air,

    And suddenly there’s no meaning in our kiss,
      And your lit upward face grows, where we lie
    Lonelier and dreadfuller than sunlight is,
      And dumb and mad and eyeless like the sky.




                               *The Fish*

    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, glooms his dream,
    Who lips the roots o’ the shore, and glides
    Superb on unreturning tides.
    Those silent waters weave for him
    A fluctuant mutable world and dim,
    Where wavering masses bulge and gape
    Mysterious, and shape to shape
    Dies momently through whorl and hollow,
    And form and line and solid follow
    Solid and line and form to dream
    Fantastic down the eternal stream;
    An obscure world, a shifting world,
    Bulbous, or pulled to thin, or curled,
    Or serpentine, or driving arrows,
    Or serene slidings, or March narrows.
    There slipping wave and shore are one,
    And weed and mud.  No ray of sun,
    But glow to glow fades down the deep
    (As dream to unknown dream in sleep);
    Shaken translucency illumes
    The hyaline of drifting glooms;
    The strange soft-handed depth subdues
    Drowned colour there, but black to hues,
    As death to living, decomposes—
    Red darkness of the heart of roses,
    Blue brilliant from dead starless skies,
    And gold that lies behind the eyes,
    The unknown unnameable sightless white
    That is the essential flame of night,
    Lustreless purple, hooded green,
    The myriad hues that lie between
    Darkness and darkness!...

      And all’s one,
    Gentle, embracing, quiet, dun,
    The world he rests in, world he knows,
    Perpetual curving.  Only—grows
    An eddy in that ordered falling,
    A knowledge from the gloom, a calling
    Weed in the wave, gleam in the mud—
    The dark fire leaps along his blood;
    Dateless and deathless, blind and still,
    The intricate impulse works its will;
    His woven world drops back; and he,
    Sans providence, sans memory,
    Unconscious and directly driven,
    Fades to some dank sufficient heaven.

    O world of lips, O world of laughter,
    Where hope is fleet and thought flies after,
    Of lights in the clear night, of cries
    That drift along the wave and rise
    Thin to the glittering stars above,
    You know the hands, the eyes of love!
    The strife of limbs, the sightless clinging,
    The infinite distance, and the singing
    Blown by the wind, a flame of sound,
    The gleam, the flowers, and vast around
    The horizon, and the heights above—
    You know the sigh, the song of love!

    But there the night is close, and there
    Darkness is cold and strange and bare;
    And the secret deeps are whisperless;
    And rhythm is all deliciousness;
    And joy is in the throbbing tide,
    Whose intricate fingers beat and glide
    In felt bewildering harmonies
    Of trembling touch; and music is
    The exquisite knocking of the blood.
    Space is no more, under the mud;
    His bliss is older than the sun.
    Silent and straight the waters run.
    The lights, the cries, the willows dim,
    And the dark tide are one with him.




                           *Dining-room Tea*

    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 cup and cloth; and they and we
    Flung all the dancing moments by
    With jest and glitter.  Lip and eye
    Flashed on the glory, shone and cried,
    Improvident, unmemoried;
    And fitfully and like a flame
    The light of laughter went and came.
    Proud in their careless transience moved
    The changing faces that I loved.

    Till suddenly, and otherwhence,
    I looked upon your innocence.
    For lifted clear and still and strange
    From the dark woven flow of change
    Under a vast and starless sky
    I saw the immortal moment lie.
    One instant I, an instant, knew
    As God knows all.  And it and you
    I, above Time, oh, blind! could see
    In witless immortality.
    I saw the marble cup; the tea,
    Hung on the air, an amber stream;
    I saw the fire’s unglittering gleam,
    The painted flame, the frozen smoke.
    No more the flooding lamplight broke
    On flying eyes and lips and hair;
    But lay, but slept unbroken there,
    On stiller flesh, and body breathless,
    And lips and laughter stayed and deathless,
    And words on which no silence grew.
    Light was more alive than you.

    For suddenly, and otherwhence,
    I looked on your magnificence.
    I saw the stillness and the light,
    And you, august, immortal, white,
    Holy and strange; and every glint
    Posture and jest and thought and tint
    Freed from the mask of transiency,
    Triumphant in eternity,
    Immote, immortal.

      Dazed at length
    Human eyes grew, mortal strength
    Wearied; and Time began to creep.
    Change closed about me like a sleep.
    Light glinted on the eyes I loved.
    The cup was filled.  The bodies moved.
    The drifting petal came to ground.
    The laughter chimed its perfect round.
    The broken syllable was ended.
    And I, so certain and so friended,
    How could I cloud, or how distress,
    The heaven of your unconsciousness?
    Or shake at Time’s sufficient spell,
    Stammering of lights unutterable?
    The eternal holiness of you,
    The timeless end, you never knew,
    The peace that lay, the light that shone.
    You never knew that I had gone
    A million miles away, and stayed
    A million years.  The laughter played
    Unbroken round me; and the jest
    Flashed on.  And we that knew the best
    Down wonderful hours grew happier yet.
    I sang at heart, and talked, and eat,
    And lived from laugh to laugh, I too,
    When you were there, and you, and you.




                    *The Old Vicarage, Grantchester*

                           _Café 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 you
    A tunnel of green gloom, and sleep
    Deeply above; and green and deep
    The stream mysterious glides beneath,
    Green as a dream and deep as death.
    —Oh, damn!  I know it!  And I know
    How the May fields all golden show,
    And when the day is young and sweet,
    Gild gloriously the bare feet
    That run to bathe....
      _Du lieber Gott!_
    Here am I, sweating, sick, and hot,
    And there the shadowed waters fresh
    Lean up to embrace the naked flesh.

    _Temperamentvott_ German Jews
    Drink beer around;—and there the dews
    Are soft beneath a morn of gold.
    Here tulips bloom as they are told;
    Unkempt about those hedges blows
    An English unofficial rose;
    And there the unregulated sun
    Slopes down to rest when day is done,
    And wakes a vague unpunctual star,
    A slippered Hesper; and there are
    Meads towards Haslingfield and Coton
    Where _das Betreten_’s not _verboten_....

    [Greek: eíthe genoimen] ... would I were
    In Grantchester, in Grantchester!—
    Some, it may be, can get in touch
    With Nature there, or Earth, or such.
    And clever modern men have seen
    A 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 lie
    Day long and watch the Cambridge sky,
    And, flower-lulled in sleepy grass,
    Hear the cool lapse of hours pass,
    Until the centuries blend and blur
    In Grantchester, in Grantchester....
    Still in the dawnlit waters cool
    His ghostly Lordship swims his pool,
    And tries the strokes, essays the tricks,
    Long learnt on Hellespont, or Styx,
    Dan Chaucer hears his river still
    Chatter 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 go
    On lissom, clerical, printless toe;
    And oft between the boughs is seen
    The sly shade of a Rural Dean....
    Till, at a shiver in the skies,
    Vanishing with Satanic cries,
    The prim ecclesiastic rout
    Leaves but a startled sleeper-out,
    Grey heavens, the first bird’s drowsy calls,
    The falling house that never falls.

    God!  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 prefer
    The lovely hamlet Grantchester.
    For Cambridge people rarely smile,
    Being urban, squat, and packed with guile;
    And Royston men in the far South
    Are 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 parts
    Have 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 believe
    At 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 creep
    Round 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 stir
    Across the moon at Grantchester!
    To smell the thrilling-sweet and rotten
    Unforgettable, unforgotten
    River-smell, and hear the breeze
    Sobbing in the little trees.
    Say, do the elm-clumps greatly stand,
    Still guardians of that holy land?
    The chestnuts shade, in reverend dream,
    The yet unacademic stream?
    Is dawn a secret shy and cold
    Anadyomene, silver-gold?
    And sunset still a golden sea
    From 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 still
    Under the mill, under the mill?
    Say, is there Beauty yet to find?
    And Certainty? and Quiet kind?
    Deep meadows yet, for to forget
    The lies, and truths, and pain? ... oh! yet
    Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
    And is there honey still for tea?




                    *The Funeral of Youth: Threnody*

    The day that _Youth_ had died,
    There came to his grave-side,
    In decent mourning, from the county’s ends,
    Those scattered friends
    Who 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 time
    When _Youth_ kept open house,
    Nor left untasted
    Aught 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 tanned
    And 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 wed
    Her 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 rougèd cheek;
    Poor old _Conceit_, his wonder unassuag’d;
    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 catch
    Old _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 child
    And 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.




                          *Beauty and Beauty*

    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—

    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 years
      After—after—




                            *The Chilterns*

    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 Wendover
      By 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 lie
      Forgotten 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 find
      The best of my desires;
    The autumn road, the mellow wind
      That 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.




                                 *Love*

    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 crying
    Of credulous hearts, in heaven—such are but taking
      Their own poor dreams within their arms, and lying
    Each 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.




                            *The Busy Heart*

    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.




                     *He Wonders Whether to Praise
                            or to Blame Her*

    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 he’s thrown away?

    Be you, in truth, this dull, slight, cloudy naught,
      The more fool I, so great a fool to adore;
    But if you’re that high goddess once I thought,
      The more your godhead is, I lose the more.

    Dear fool, pity the fool who thought you clever!
      Dear wisdom, do not mock the fool that missed you!
    Most fair,—the blind has lost your face for ever!
      Most foul,—how could I see you while I kissed you?

    So ... the poor love of fools and blind I’ve proved you,
    For, foul or lovely, ’twas a fool that loved you.




                              *Hauntings*

    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 ranks of mirth and crying,
      Hungers, and pains, and each dull passionate mood,—
    Quite lost, and all but all forgot, undying,
      Comes back the ecstasy of your quietude.

    So a poor ghost, beside his misty streams,
    Is haunted by strange doubts, evasive dreams,
      Hints of a pre-Lethean life, of men,
    Stars, rocks, and flesh, things unintelligible,
      And light on waving grass, he knows not when,
    And feet that ran, but where, he cannot tell.

    THE PACIFIC, 1914




                               *One Day*

    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,
    And sent you following the white waves of sea,
      And crowned your head with fancies, nothing worth,
    Stray buds from that old dust of misery,
      Being glad with a new foolish quiet mirth.

    So lightly I played with those dark memories,
      Just as a child, beneath the summer skies,
    Plays hour by hour with a strange shining stone,
      For which (he knows not) towns were fire of old,
    And love has been betrayed, and murder done,
      And great kings turned to a little bitter mould.

    THE PACIFIC, _October_ 1913




                                *Sonnet*

    (_Suggested by some of the Proceedings of the_
    _Society for Psychical Research_)

    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 close-covered by-way of the air,
      Some low sweet alley between wind and wind,
      Stoop under faint gleams, thread the shadows, find
    Some whispering ghost-forgotten nook, and there

    Spend in pure converse our eternal day;
      Think each in each, immediately wise;
    Learn all we lacked before; hear, know, and say
      What this tumultuous body now denies;
    And feel, who have laid our groping hands away;
      And see, no longer blinded by our eyes.




                                *Clouds*

    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
    Up 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 know
    Their benediction empty as they bless.

    They say that the Dead die not, but remain
      Near 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




                              *Mutability*

    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,
    _Æterna 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




                                *Heaven*

    Fish (fly-replete, in depth of June,
    Dawdling away their wat’ry noon)
    Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear,
    Each secret fishy hope or fear.
    Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond;
    But is there anything Beyond?
    This life cannot be All, they swear,
    For how unpleasant, if it were!
    One may not doubt that, somehow, good
    Shall come of Water and of Mud;
    And, sure, the reverent eye must see
    A Purpose in Liquidity.
    We darkly know, by Faith we cry,
    The future is not Wholly Dry.
    Mud unto Mud!—Death eddies near—
    Not here the appointed End, not here!
    But somewhere, beyond Space and Time,
    Is wetter water, slimier slime!
    And there (they trust) there swimmeth One
    Who swam ere rivers were begun,
    Immense, of fishy form and mind,
    Squamous, omnipotent, and kind;
    And under that Almighty Fin,
    The littlest fish may enter in.
    Oh! never fly conceals a hook,
    Fish say, in the Eternal Brook,
    But more than mundane weeds are there,
    And mud, celestially fair;
    Fat caterpillars drift around,
    And Paradisal grubs are found;
    Unfading moths, immortal flies,
    And the worm that never dies.
    And in that Heaven of all their wish,
    There shall be no more land, say fish.




                             *Tiare Tahiti*

    Mamua, when our laughter ends,
    And hearts and bodies, brown as white,
    Are dust about the doors of friends,
    Or scent a-blowing down the night,
    Then, oh! then, the wise agree,
    Comes our immortality.
    Mamua, there waits a land
    Hard for us to understand.
    Out of time, beyond the sun,
    All are one in Paradise,
    You and Pupure are one,
    And Taü, and the ungainly wise.
    There the Eternals are, and there
    The Good, the Lovely, and the True,
    And Types, whose earthly copies were
    The foolish broken things we knew;
    There is the Face, whose ghosts we are;
    The real, the never-setting Star;
    And the Flower, of which we love
    Faint and fading shadows here;
    Never a tear, but only Grief;
    Dance, but not the limbs that move;
    Songs in Song shall disappear;
    Instead of lovers, Love shall be;
    For hearts, Immutability;
    And there, on the Ideal Reef,
    Thunders the Everlasting Sea!

    And my laughter, and my pain,
    Shall home to the Eternal Brain.
    And all lovely things, they say,
    Meet in Loveliness again;
    Miri’s laugh, Teïpo’s feet,
    And the hands of Matua,
    Stars and sunlight there shall meet,
    Coral’s hues and rainbows there,
    And Teüra’s braided hair;
    And with the starred _tiare’s_ white,
    And white birds in the dark ravine,
    And _flamboyants_ ablaze at night,
    And jewels, and evening’s after-green,
    And dawns of pearl and gold and red,
    Mamua, your lovelier head!
    And there’ll no more be one who dreams
    Under the ferns, of crumbling stuff,
    Eyes of illusion, mouth that seems,
    All time-entangled human love.
    And you’ll no longer swing and sway
    Divinely down the scented shade,
    Where feet to Ambulation fade,
    And moons are lost in endless Day.
    How shall we wind these wreaths of ours,
    Where there are neither heads nor flowers?
    Oh, Heaven’s Heaven!—but we’ll be missing
    The palms, and sunlight, and the south;
    And there’s an end, I think, of kissing,
    When our mouths are one with Mouth....

    _Taü here_, Mamua,
    Crown the hair, and come away!
    Hear the calling of the moon,
    And the whispering scents that stray
    About the idle warm lagoon.
    Hasten, hand in human hand,
    Down the dark, the flowered way,
    Along the whiteness of the sand,
    And in the water’s soft caress
    Wash the mind of foolishness,
    Mamua, until the day.
    Spend the glittering moonlight there
    Pursuing down the soundless deep
    Limbs that gleam and shadowy hair,
    Or floating lazy, half-asleep.
    Dive and double and follow after,
    Snare in flowers, and kiss, and call,
    With lips that fade, and human laughter,
    And faces individual,
    Well this side of Paradise! ....
    There’s little comfort in the wise.

    PAPEETE, February 1914




                              *Retrospect*

    In your arms was still delight,
    Quiet as a street at night;
    And thoughts of you, I do remember,
    Were green leaves in a darkened chamber,
    Were dark clouds in a moonless sky.
    Love, in you, went passing by,
    Penetrative, remote, and rare,
    Like a bird in the wide air,
    And, as the bird, it left no trace
    In the heaven of your face.
    In your stupidity I found
    The sweet hush after a sweet sound.
    All about you was the light
    That dims the greying end of night;
    Desire was the unrisen sun,
    Joy the day not yet begun,
    With tree whispering to tree,
    Without wind, quietly.
    Wisdom slept within your hair,
    And Long-Suffering was there,
    And, in the flowing of your dress,
    Undiscerning Tenderness.
    And when you thought, it seemed to me,
    Infinitely, and like a sea,
    About the slight world you had known
    Your vast unconsciousness was thrown.

    O haven without wave or tide!
    Silence, in which all songs have died!
    Holy book, where hearts are still!
    And home at length under the hill!
    O mother quiet, breasts of peace,
    Where love itself would faint and cease!
    O infinite deep I never knew,
    I would come back, come back to you,
    Find you, as a pool unstirred,
    Kneel down by you, and never a word,
    Lay my head, and nothing said,
    In your hands, ungarlanded;
    And a long watch you would keep;
    And I should sleep, and I should sleep!

    MATAIEA, _January_ 1914




                           *The Great Lover*

    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,
    Desire illimitable, and still content,
    And all dear names men use, to cheat despair,
    For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear
    Our hearts at random down the dark of life.
    Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strife
    Steals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far,
    My night shall be remembered for a star
    That outshone all the suns of all men’s days.
    Shall I not crown them with immortal praise
    Whom I have loved, who have given me, dared with me
    High secrets, and in darkness knelt to see
    The inenarrable godhead of delight?
    Love is a flame:—we have beaconed the world’s night.
    A city:—and we have built it, these and I.
    An emperor:—we have taught the world to die.
    So, for their sakes I loved, ere I go hence,
    And the high cause of Love’s magnificence,
    And to keep loyalties young, I’ll write those names
    Golden for ever, eagles, crying flames,
    And set them as a banner, that men may know,
    To dare the generations, burn, and blow
    Out on the wind of Time, shining and streaming..

    These I have loved:
      White plates and cups, clean-gleaming,
    Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust;
    Wet roofs, beneath the lamplight; the strong crust
    Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food;
    Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood;
    And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers;
    And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours,
    Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon;
    Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon
    Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss
    Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is
    Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen
    Unpassioned beauty of a great machine;
    The benison of hot water; furs to touch;
    The good smell of old clothes; and other such,
    The comfortable smell of friendly fingers,
    Hair’s fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers
    About dead leaves and last year’s ferns....

        Dear names,
    And thousand other throng to me!  Royal flames;
    Sweet water’s dimpling laugh from tap or spring;
    Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing;
    Voices in laughter, too; and body’s pain,
    Soon turned to peace; and the deep-panting train;
    Firm sands; the little dulling edge of foam
    That browns and dwindles as the wave goes home;
    And washen stones, gay for an hour; the cold
    Graveness of iron; moist black earthen mould;
    Sleep; and high places; footprints in the dew;
    And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new;
    And new-peeled sticks; and shining pools on grass;
    All these have been my loves.  And these shall pass,
    Whatever passes not, in the great hour,
    Nor all my passion, all my prayers, have power
    To hold them with me through the gate of Death.
    They’ll play deserter, turn with the traitor breath,
    Break the high bond we made, and sell Love’s trust
    And sacramented covenant to the dust.
    ——Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake,
    And give what’s left of love again, and make
    New friends, now strangers....
      But the best I’ve known,
    Stays here, and changes, breaks, grows old, is blown
    About the winds of the world, and fades from brains
    Of living men, and dies.
      Nothing remains.
    O dear my loves, O faithless, once again
    This one last gift I give: that after men
    Shall know, and later lovers, far-removed,
    Praise you, "All these were lovely"; say, "He loved."

    MATAIEA, 1914




                             *The Treasure*

    When colour goes home into the eyes,
      And lights that shine are shut again
    With dancing girls and sweet birds’ cries
      Behind the gateways of the brain;
    And that no-place which gave them birth, shall close
    The rainbow and the rose:—

    Still may Time hold some golden space
      Where I’ll unpack that scented store
    Of song and flower and sky and face,
      And count, and touch, and turn them o’er,
    Musing upon them; as a mother, who
    Has watched her children all the rich day through,
    Sits, quiet-handed, in the fading light,
    When children sleep, ere night.




                                 *1914*

    I. Peace

    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 cleanness leaping,
    Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary,
      Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move,
    And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,
      And all the little emptiness of love!

    Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,
      Where there’s no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,
        Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;
    Nothing to shake the laughing heart’s long peace there
      But only agony, and that has ending;
        And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.


    II. Safety

    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 as we?’
    We have found safety with all things undying,
      The winds, and morning, tears of men and mirth,
    The deep night, and birds singing, and clouds flying,
      And sleep, and freedom, and the autumnal earth.

    We have built a house that is not for Time’s throwing.
      We have gained a peace unshaken by pain for ever.
    War knows no power.  Safe shall be my going,
      Secretly armed against all death’s endeavour;
    Safe though all safety’s lost; safe where men fall;
    And if these poor limbs die, safest of all.


    III. The Dead

    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 the red
    Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be
      Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene,
      That men call age; and those who would have been,
    Their sons, they gave, their immortality.

    Blow, bugles, blow!  They brought us, for our dearth,
      Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain.
    Honour has come back, as a king, to earth,
      And paid his subjects with a royal wage;
    And Nobleness walks in our ways again;
      And we have come into our heritage.


    IV. The Dead

    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,
      And sunset, and the colours of the earth.
    These had seen movement, and heard music; known
      Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;
    Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;
      Touched flowers and furs and cheeks.  All this is ended.

    There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter
    And lit by the rich skies, all day.  And after,
      Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance
    And wandering loveliness.  He leaves a white
      Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,
    A width, a shining peace, under the night.


    V. The Soldier

    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 dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
      Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
    A body of England’s breathing English air,
      Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

    And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
      A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
        Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
    Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
      And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
      In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.



                      PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
                       BILLING AND SONS, LIMITED
                          GUILDFORD AND ESHER




           *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *




                                *Poems*


                           *by Rupert Brooke*

                     (Originally published in 1911)

                       _Twenty-eighth Impression_
                             3s. 6d. _net_

"The volume of ’Poems’ published in 1911, which contains work written as
early as 1905, when he was eighteen, shows an art curiously personal,
skilful, deliberate.  It shows, too, an intellectual deftness altogether
unexpected in so young a poet, and it shows finally, not always but
often, an indifference to the normal material upon which poets good and
bad are apt to work from the outset, and in the shaping of which
ultimately comes all poetry that is memorable.  Nearly every page is
interesting on account of its art and intellectual deftness, qualities
that we should not expect to be marked....

"... Even in the poems where most we feel the lack of emotional truth
there is a beauty of word that made the book full of the most exciting
promise.  Already, too there was in certain poems assurance against the
danger that this intellectual constraint might degenerate into
virtuosity."—From "RUPERT BROOKE," by John Drinkwater, in the
_Contemporary Review_, December 1915.

*** The poems on pp. 7-38 of _Selected Poems_ are taken from the above
volume.



                     *      *      *      *      *



                         *1914 and other Poems*

                           *by Rupert Brooke*

                    *With a Photogravure Portrait by
                            SHERRIL SCHELL*

                       _Twenty-eighth Impression_
                             3s. 6d. _net_

"To those of us who see in poetry the perfect flowering of life, the
story of Rupert Brooke will always mean chiefly the score or so of poems
in which he reached to the full maturity of his genius and gave
imperishable expression to the very heart of his personality.... Not
even the fact that the man who wrote the sonnets, than which after long
generations nothing shall make the year 1914 more memorable, served and
died for England at war, can add one beat to their pulse.  The poetry
that shines and falls across them in one perfect and complete wave is,
as poetry must always be, independent of all factual experience, and
comes wholly from the deeper experience of the imagination."—From
"RUPERT BROOKE" by John Drinkwater, in the _Contemporary Review_.
December 1915.

*** The poems on pp. 39-75 of _Selected Poems_ are taken from the above
volume.



                     *      *      *      *      *



                           _UNIFORM EDITION_

                 *The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke*

                            *With a Memoir*

              *Two Photogravure Portraits from Photographs
                           by SHERRIL SCHELL*

                       Extra crown 8vo.  Buckram
                           _Ninth Impression_
                             12s. 6d. _net_

                 _Some Press Opinions of the "Memoir"_

"To me this picture of Rupert Brooke is one of the pleasantest and most
inspiriting that I have read in biographical literature for many a day.
Here are 160 pages of pure gold."—C. K. S. in _The Sphere_.

"A model of what a memoir should be."—_Liverpool Post_.

"The Memoir ... is one of the most perfect we have ever read."—_Pall
Mall Gazette_.

"An admirable picture of one whom the gods loved and gifted
generously."—_Punch_.

*** The Memoir may also be obtained separately, uniform with ’Poems’ and
’1914,’ with a Portrait from a photograph by SHERRIL SCHELL, price 6s.
net.



                     *      *      *      *      *



                           _UNIFORM EDITION_

                         *Letters from America:
                           by Rupert Brooke*

                            *With a Preface
                            by Henry James*

               Photogravure Portrait from a photograph by
                             SHERRIL SCHELL

                       Extra crown 8vo.  Buckram
                          _Fourth Impression_
                             12s. 6d. _net_



                     *      *      *      *      *



                *John Webster and the Elizabethan Drama*

                           *by Rupert Brooke*

                       Extra crown 8vo.  Buckram
                          _Second Impression *
                             12s. 6d. *net_

*** This is the ’dissertation,’ written in 1911-12, by which Rupert
Brooke gained his Fellowship at King’s College, Cambridge, in 1913.



           SIDGWICK & JACKSON, Ltd., 3 Adam St., London, W.C.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 48306 ***