1914
AND OTHER POEMS
BY RUPERT BROOKE
CONTENTS
|
| 1914 |
PAGE |
| I. Peace |
11 |
| II. Safety |
12 |
| III. The Dead |
13 |
| IV. The Dead |
14 |
| V. The Soldier |
15 |
| The Treasure |
16 |
| THE SOUTH SEAS |
|
| Tiare Tahiti |
19 |
| Retrospect |
22 |
| The Great Lover |
24 |
| Heaven |
27 |
| Doubts |
29 |
| There's Wisdom in Women |
30 |
He wonders whether to praise or to
blame her |
31 |
| A Memory |
32 |
| One Day |
33 |
| Waikiki |
34 |
| Hauntings |
35 |
Sonnet (Suggested by some of the Proceedings
of the Society for Psychical Research) |
36 |
| Clouds |
37 |
| Mutability |
38 |
| OTHER POEMS |
|
| The Busy Heart |
41 |
| Love |
42 |
| Unfortunate |
43 |
| The Chilterns |
44 |
| Home |
46 |
| The Night Journey |
47 |
| Song |
49 |
| Beauty and Beauty |
50 |
| The Way that Lovers use |
51 |
| Mary and Gabriel |
52 |
| The Funeral of Youth |
55 |
| GRANTCHESTER |
|
| The Old Vicarage, Grantchester |
59 |
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