Part 7

"'And the worst friend and enemy is but Death' . . . 'And if these poor limbs die, safest of all.' So ended two of the five sonnets, with the common title '1914', which Rupert Brooke wrote while he was in training, between the Antwerp expedition and sailing for the Aegean. These sonnets are incomparably the finest utterance of English poetry concerning the Great War. We knew the splendid promise of Rupert Brooke's earlier poetry; these sonnets are the brief perfection of his achievement. They are much more than that: they are among the few supreme utterances of English patriotism. It was natural, perhaps, that they should leave all else that has been written about the war so far behind. It is not so much that they are the work of a talent scarcely, in its own way, to be equalled to-day; it was much more that they were the work of a poet who had for his material the feeling that he was giving up everything to fight for England -- the feeling, I think, that he was giving his life for England. Reading these five sonnets now, it seems as if he had in them written his own epitaph. I believe he thought so himself; a few words he said in my last talk with him makes me believe that -- now. At any rate, the history of literature, so full of Fate's exquisite ironies, has nothing more poignantly ironic, and nothing at the same time more beautifully appropriate, than the publication of Rupert Brooke's noble sonnet-sequence, '1914', a few swift weeks before the death they had imagined, and had already made lovely. Each one of these five sonnets faces, in a quiet exultation, the thought of death, of death for England; and understands, as seldom even English poetry has understood, the unspeakable beauty of the thought:

"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.

I am strangely mistaken if the accent of the noblest English poetry does not speak to us in those lines. And again:

"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, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

"This -- this music, this beauty, this courage -- was Rupert Brooke. But it is, we may be sure, his immortality. It is not yet tolerable to speak of personal loss. The name seemed to stand for a magical vitality that must be safe -- safe! Yes, 'and if these poor limbs die, safest of all!' What poetry has lost in him cannot be judged by any one who has not read those last sonnets, now his farewell to England and the world. I am not underrating the rest of his work. There was an intellectual keenness and brightness in it, a fire of imagery and (in the best sense) wit, the like of which had not been known, or known only in snatches, in our literature since the best days of the later Elizabethans. And it was all penetrated by a mastering passion, the most elemental of all passions -- the passion for life. 'I have been so great a lover,' he cries, and artfully leads us on to think he means the usual passion of a young poet's career. But it is just life he loves, and not in any abstract sense, but all the infinite little familiar details of life catalogued with delighted jest. This was profoundly sincere: no one ever loved life more wholly or more minutely. And he celebrated his love exquisitely, often unforgettably, through all his earlier poetry, getting further intensity from a long sojourn in the South Seas. But this passion for life had never had seriously to fight for its rights and joys. Like all great lovers of life, he had pleased himself with the thought of death and after death: not insincerely, by any means, but simply because this gave a finer relish to the sense of being alive. Platonism, which offers delightful games for such subtle wit as his, he especially liked to play with. It was one more element in the life of here and now, the life of mortal thought and sense and spirit, infinitely varying and by him infinitely loved. And then came 1914; and his passion for life had suddenly to face the thought of voluntary death. But there was no struggle; for instantly the passion for life became one with the will to die -- and now it has become death itself. But first Rupert Brooke had told the world once more how the passion for beautiful life may reach its highest passion and most radiant beauty when it is the determination to die."

Margaret Lavington.

London, October, 1915.

Addendum

Comprised of poems written in his memory by three poets contemporary to Rupert Brooke. A short poem by Mr. Gibson is already included in the Biographical Note; a set of four of his sonnets is included here. The poems are Public Domain.

In Memory of Rupert Brooke

In alien earth, across a troubled sea, His body lies that was so fair and young. His mouth is stopped, with half his songs unsung; His arm is still, that struck to make men free. But let no cloud of lamentation be Where, on a warrior's grave, a lyre is hung. We keep the echoes of his golden tongue, We keep the vision of his chivalry.

So Israel's joy, the loveliest of kings, Smote now his harp, and now the hostile horde. To-day the starry roof of Heaven rings With psalms a soldier made to praise his Lord; And David rests beneath Eternal wings, Song on his lips, and in his hand a sword.

--Joyce Kilmer, from 'Main Street and Other Poems', 1917.

Rupert Brooke

I

Your face was lifted to the golden sky Ablaze beyond the black roofs of the square As flame on flame leapt, flourishing in air Its tumult of red stars exultantly To the cold constellations dim and high: And as we neared the roaring ruddy flare Kindled to gold your throat and brow and hair Until you burned, a flame of ecstasy.

The golden head goes down into the night Quenched in cold gloom -- and yet again you stand Beside me now with lifted face alight, As, flame to flame, and fire to fire you burn . . . Then, recollecting, laughingly you turn, And look into my eyes and take my hand.

II

Once in my garret -- you being far away Tramping the hills and breathing upland air, Or so I fancied -- brooding in my chair, I watched the London sunshine feeble and grey Dapple my desk, too tired to labour more, When, looking up, I saw you standing there Although I'd caught no footstep on the stair, Like sudden April at my open door.

Though now beyond earth's farthest hills you fare, Song-crowned, immortal, sometimes it seems to me That, if I listen very quietly, Perhaps I'll hear a light foot on the stair And see you, standing with your angel air, Fresh from the uplands of eternity.

III

Your eyes rejoiced in colour's ecstasy, Fulfilling even their uttermost desire, When, over a great sunlit field afire With windy poppies streaming like a sea Of scarlet flame that flaunted riotously Among green orchards of that western shire, You gazed as though your heart could never tire Of life's red flood in summer revelry.

And as I watched you, little thought had I How soon beneath the dim low-drifting sky Your soul should wander down the darkling way, With eyes that peer a little wistfully, Half-glad, half-sad, remembering, as they see Lethean poppies, shrivelling ashen grey.

IV

October chestnuts showered their perishing gold Over us as beside the stream we lay In the Old Vicarage garden that blue day, Talking of verse and all the manifold Delights a little net of words may hold, While in the sunlight water-voles at play Dived under a trailing crimson bramble-spray, And walnuts thudded ripe on soft black mould.

Your soul goes down unto a darker stream Alone, O friend, yet even in death's deep night Your eyes may grow accustomed to the dark And Styx for you may have the ripple and gleam Of your familiar river, and Charon's bark Tarry by that old garden of your delight.

--Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, 1916.

To Rupert Brooke

Though we, a happy few, Indubitably knew That from the purple came This poet of pure flame,

The world first saw his light Flash on an evil night, And heard his song from far Above the drone of war.

Out of the primal dark He leapt, like lyric lark, Singing his aubade strain; Then fell to earth again.

We garner all he gave, And on his hero grave, For love and honour strew, Rosemary, myrtle, rue.

Son of the Morning, we Had kept you thankfully; But yours the asphodel: Hail, singer, and farewell!

--Eden Phillpotts, from 'Plain Song, 1914-1916'.