Poets' Corner - Rupert Brooke

H O M E

The Collected
Poems of
Rupert Brooke
(1915)

1905-1908

Poets' Corner Scripting
© 2009 Bob Blair, S.L. Spanoudis and
theotherpages.org.
All rights reserved worldwide.

The Collected Poems of

Rupert Brooke

(1915)

Edited for the Web
by Bob Blair

Sonnet: "Oh! Death will find me, long before I tire"

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.: Rupert Brooke

Sonnet: "I said I splendidly loved you; it's not true"

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 for me.
Love soars from earth to ecstasies unwist.: Love is flung Lucifer-like from Heaven to Hell.
But -- - there are wanderers in the middle mist,: Who cry for shadows, clutch, and cannot tell
Whether they love at all, or, loving, whom:: An old song's lady, a fool in fancy dress,
Or phantoms, or their own face on the gloom;: For love of Love, or from heart's loneliness.
Pleasure's not theirs, nor pain. They doubt, and sigh,: And do not love at all. Of these am I.; Rupert Brooke

Success

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 of pity and wise,
Flushed suddenly; the white godhead in new fear: Intolerably so struggling, and so shamed;
Most holy and far, if you'd come all too near,: If earth had seen Earth's lordliest wild limbs tamed,
Shaken, and trapped, and shivering, for my touch -- -: Myself should I have slain? or that foul you?
But this the strange gods, who had given so much,: To have seen and known you, this they might not do.
One last shame's spared me, one black word's unspoken;: And I'm alone; and you have not awoken.; Rupert Brooke

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.; Rupert Brooke

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.: Rupert Brooke

Mummia

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 short night they reeled to find: Ten centuries of lust.
So I, from paint, stone, tale, and rhyme,: Stuffed love's infinity,
And sucked all lovers of all time: To rarify ecstasy.
Helen's the hair shuts out from me: Verona's livid skies;
Gypsy the lips I press; and see: Two Antonys in your eyes.
The unheard invisible lovely dead: Lie with us in this place,
And ghostly hands above my head: Close face to straining face;
Their blood is wine along our limbs;: Their whispering voices wreathe
Savage forgotten drowsy hymns: Under the names we breathe;
Woven from their tomb, and one with it,: The night wherein we press;
Their thousand pitchy pyres have lit: Your flaming nakedness.
For the uttermost years have cried and clung: To kiss your mouth to mine;
And hair long dust was caught, was flung,: Hand shaken to hand divine,
And Life has fired, and Death not shaded,: All Time's uncounted bliss,
And the height o' the world has flamed and faded,: Love, that our love be this!; Rupert Brooke

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.: Rupert Brooke

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 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!: Rupert Brooke

Flight

VOICES out of the shade that cried,: And long noon in the hot calm places,
And children's play by the wayside,: And country eyes, and quiet faces -- -; All these were round my steady paces.
Those that I could have loved went by me;: Cool gardened homes slept in the sun;
I heard the whisper of water nigh me,: Saw hands that beckoned, shone, were gone; In the green and gold. And I went on.
For if my echoing footfall slept,: Soon a far whispering there'd be
Of a little lonely wind that crept: From tree to tree, and distantly; Followed me, followed me. . . .
But the blue vaporous end of day: Brought peace, and pursuit baffled quite,
Where between pine-woods dipped the way.: I turned, slipped in and out of sight.; I trod as quiet as the night.
The pine-boles kept perpetual hush;: And in the boughs wind never swirled.
I found a flowering lowly bush,: And bowed, slid in, and sighed and curled,; Hidden at rest from all the world.
Safe! I was safe, and glad, I knew!: Yet -- - with cold heart and cold wet brows
I lay. And the dark fell. . . . There grew: Meward a sound of shaken boughs;; And ceased, above my intricate house;
And silence, silence, silence found me. . . .: I felt the unfaltering movement creep
Among the leaves. They shed around me: Calm clouds of scent, that I did weep;; And stroked my face. I fell asleep.; Rupert Brooke

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.: Rupert Brooke

The One Before the Last

I DREAMT I was in love again: With the One Before the Last,
And smiled to greet the pleasant pain: Of that innocent young past.
But I jumped to feel how sharp had been: The pain when it did live,
How the faded dreams of Nineteen-ten: Were Hell in Nineteen-five.
The boy's woe was as keen and clear,: The boy's love just as true,
And the One Before the Last, my dear,: Hurt quite as much as you.; * * * * *
Sickly I pondered how the lover: Wrongs the unanswering tomb,
And sentimentalizes over: What earned a better doom.
Gently he tombs the poor dim last time,: Strews pinkish dust above,
And sighs, "The dear dead boyish pastime!: But this -- - ah, God! -- - is Love!"
-- Better oblivion hide dead true loves,: Better the night enfold,
Than men, to eke the praise of new loves,: Should lie about the old!; * * * * *
Oh! bitter thoughts I had in plenty.: But here's the worst of it -- -
I shall forget, in Nineteen-twenty,: You ever hurt abit!; Rupert Brooke

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.: Rupert Brooke

The Life Beyond

HE WAKES, who never thought to wake again,: Who held the end was Death. He opens eyes
Slowly, to one long livid oozing plain: Closed down by the strange eyeless heavens. He lies;; And waits; and once in timeless sick surmise
Through the dead air heaves up an unknown hand,
Like a dry branch. No life is in that land,: Himself not lives, but is a thing that cries;
An unmeaning point upon the mud; a speck: Of moveless horror; an Immortal One
Cleansed of the world, sentient and dead; a fly: Fast-stuck in grey sweat on a corpse's neck.
I thought when love for you died, I should die.
It's dead. Alone, most strangely, I live on.: Rupert Brooke

Lines Written in the Belief That the Ancient Roman Festival of the Dead Was Called Ambarvalia

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 and years between us,: Spite of your chosen part,
I do remember; and I go: With laughter in my heart.
So above the little folk that know not,: Out of the white hill-town,
High up I clamber; and I remember;: And watch the day go down.
Gold is my heart, and the world's golden,: And one peak tipped with light;
And the air lies still about the hill: With the first fear of night;
Till mystery down the soundless valley: Thunders, and dark is here;
And the wind blows, and the light goes,: And the night is full of fear,
And I know, one night, on some far height,: In the tongue I never knew,
I yet shall hear the tidings clear: From them that were friends of you.
They'll call the news from hill to hill,: Dark and uncomforted,
Earth and sky and the winds; and I: Shall know that you are dead.
I shall not hear your trentals,: Nor eat your arval bread;
For the kin of you will surely do: Their duty by the dead.
Their little dull greasy eyes will water;: They'll paw you, and gulp afresh.
They'll sniffle and weep, and their thoughts will creep: Like flies on the cold flesh.
They will put pence on your grey eyes,: Bind up your fallen chin,
And lay you straight, the fools that loved you: Because they were your kin.
They will praise all the bad about you,: And hush the good away,
And wonder how they'll do without you,: And then they'll go away.
But quieter than one sleeping,: And stranger than of old,
You will not stir for weeping,: You will not mind the cold;
But through the night the lips will laugh not,: The hands will be in place,
And at length the hair be lying still: About the quiet face.
With snuffle and sniff and handkerchief,: And dim and decorous mirth,
With ham and sherry, they'll meet to bury: The lordliest lass of earth.
The little dead hearts will tramp ungrieving: Behind lone-riding you,
The heart so high, the heart so living,: Heart that they never knew.
I shall not hear your trentals,: Nor eat your arval bread,
Nor with smug breath tell lies of death: To the unanswering dead.
With snuffle and sniff and handkerchief,: The folk who loved you not
Will bury you, and go wondering: Back home. And you will rot.
But laughing and half-way up to heaven,: With wind and hill and star,
I yet shall keep, before I sleep,: Your Ambarvalia.; Rupert Brooke

Dead Men's Love

THERE was a damned successful Poet;: There was a Woman like the Sun.
And they were dead. They did not know it.: They did not know their time was done.; They did not know his hymns; Were silence; and her limbs,; That had served Love so well,; Dust, and a filthy smell.
And so one day, as ever of old,: Hands out, they hurried, knee to knee;
On fire to cling and kiss and hold: And, in the other's eyes, to see; Each his own tiny face,; And in that long embrace; Feel lip and breast grow warm; To breast and lip and arm.
So knee to knee they sped again,: And laugh to laugh they ran, I'm told,
Across the streets of Hell . . .: And then; They suddenly felt the wind blow cold,; And knew, so closely pressed,; Chill air on lip and breast,; And, with a sick surprise,; The emptiness of eyes.; Rupert Brooke