1905-1908


1. Second Best
2. Day That I Have Loved
3. Sleeping Out: Full Moon
4. In Examination
5. Pine-Trees and the Sky: Evening
6. Wagner
7. The Vision of the Archangels
8. Seaside
9. On the Death of Smet-Smet,
   the Hippopotamus-Goddess
10. The Song of the Pilgrims
11. The Song of the Beasts
12. Failure
13. Ante Aram
14. Dawn
15. The Call
16. The Wayfarers
17. The Beginning
    
    1908-1911
    
    
18. Sonnet: Oh! Death will find me, long before I tire
19. Sonnet: I said I splendidly loved you; it's not true.
20. Success
21. Dust
22. Kindliness
23. Mummia
24. The Fish
25. Thoughts on the Shape
    of the Human Body
26. Flight
27. The Hill
28. The One Before the Last
29. The Jolly Company
30. The Life Beyond
31. Lines Written in the Belief That the Ancient Roman Festival of the Dead Was Called Ambarvalia
32. Dead Men's Love
33. Town and Country
34. Paralysis
35. Menelaus and Helen
36. Libido
37. Jealousy
38. Blue Evening
39. The Charm
40. Finding
41. Song
42. The Voice
43. Dining-Room Tea
44. The Goddess in the Wood
45. A Channel Passage
46. Victory
47. Day and Night
    
    Experiments
    
    
48. Choriambics -- I
49. Choriambics -- II
50. Desertion
    
    1914
    
    
51. I. Peace
52. II. Safety
53. III. The Dead
54. IV. The Dead
55. V. The Soldier
56. The Treasure
    
    The South Seas
    
    
57. Tiare Tahiti
58. Retrospect
59. The Great Lover
60. Heaven
61. Doubts
62. There's Wisdom in Women
63. He Wonders Whether to Praise or to Blame Her
64. A Memory (From a sonnet-sequence)
65. One Day
66. Waikiki
67. Hauntings
68. Sonnet (Suggested by some of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research)
69. Clouds
70. Mutability
    
    Other Poems
    
    
71. The Busy Heart
72. Love
73. Unfortunate
74. The Chilterns
75. Home
76. The Night Journey
77. Song
78. Beauty and Beauty
79. The Way That Lovers Use
80. Mary and Gabriel
81. The Funeral of Youth: Threnody
    
    Grantchester
    
    
82. The Old Vicarage, Grantchester

The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke (1915) Edited for the Web by Bob Blair

Choriambics -- I

AH! NOT now, when desire burns, and the wind calls, and the suns of spring

Light-foot dance in the woods, whisper of life, woo me to wayfaring;

Ah! not now should you come, now when the road beckons, and good friends call,

Where are songs to be sung, fights to be fought, yea! and the best of all,

Love, on myriad lips fairer than yours, kisses you could not give! . . .

Dearest, why should I mourn, whimper, and whine, I that have yet to live?

Sorrow will I forget, tears for the best, love on the lips of you,

Now, when dawn in the blood wakes, and the sun laughs up the eastern blue;

I'll forget and be glad!

                     Only at length, dear, when the great day ends,

When love dies with the last light, and the last song has been sung, and friends

All are perished, and gloom strides on the heaven: then, as alone I lie,

'Mid Death's gathering winds, frightened and dumb, sick for the past, may I

Feel you suddenly there, cool at my brow; then may I hear the peace

Of your voice at the last, whispering love, calling, ere all can cease

In the silence of death; then may I see dimly, and know, a space,

Bending over me, last light in the dark, once, as of old, your face.

Rupert Brooke

Choriambics -- II

HERE the flame that was ash, shrine that was void, lost in the haunted wood,

I have tended and loved, year upon year, I in the solitude

Waiting, quiet and glad-eyed in the dark, knowing that once a gleam

Glowed and went through the wood. Still I abode strong in a golden dream,

Unrecaptured.

                                          For I, I that had faith, knew that a face would glance

One day, white in the dim woods, and a voice call, and a radiance

Fill the grove, and the fire suddenly leap . . . and, in the heart of it,

End of labouring, you! Therefore I kept ready the altar, lit

The flame, burning apart.

                                 Face of my dreams vainly in vision white

Gleaming down to me, lo! hopeless I rise now. For about midnight

Whispers grew through the wood suddenly, strange cries in the boughs above

Grated, cries like a laugh. Silent and black then through the sacred grove

Great birds flew, as a dream, troubling the leaves, passing at length.

                                          I knew

Long expected and long loved, that afar, God of the dim wood, you

Somewhere lay, as a child sleeping, a child suddenly reft from mirth,

White and wonderful yet, white in your youth, stretched upon foreign earth,

God, immortal and dead!

                            Therefore I go; never to rest, or win

Peace, and worship of you more, and the dumb wood and the shrine therein.

Rupert Brooke

Desertion

SO LIGHT we were, so right we were, so fair faith shone,

And the way was laid so certainly, that, when I'd gone,

What dumb thing looked up at you? Was it something heard,

Or a sudden cry, that meekly and without a word

You broke the faith, and strangely, weakly, slipped apart.

You gave in -- - you, the proud of heart, unbowed of heart!

Was this, friend, the end of all that we could do?

And have you found the best for you, the rest for you?

Did you learn so suddenly (and I not by!)

Some whispered story, that stole the glory from the sky,

And ended all the splendid dream, and made you go

So dully from the fight we know, the light we know?

O faithless! the faith remains, and I must pass

Gay down the way, and on alone. Under the grass

You wait; the breeze moves in the trees, and stirs, and calls,

And covers you with white petals, with light petals.

There it shall crumble, frail and fair, under the sun,

O little heart, your brittle heart; till day be done,

And the shadows gather, falling light, and, white with dew,

Whisper, and weep; and creep to you. Good sleep to you!

Rupert Brooke

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.

Rupert Brooke

1914: 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.

Rupert Brooke

1914: 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.

Rupert Brooke

1914: 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.

Rupert Brooke

1914: 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.

Rupert Brooke

1914: VI. 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.

Rupert Brooke