1914 and Other Poems.
by Rupert Brooke.
I. PEACE
Now, G.o.d 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, a.s.sured 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 n.o.bleness 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.
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 s.p.a.ce 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.
THE SOUTH SEAS
TIARE TAHITI
Mamua, when our laughter ends, And hearts and bodies, brown as white, Are dust about the doors of friends, Or scent ablowing 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 Tau, 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, Tepo"s feet, And the hands of Matua, Stars and sunlight there shall meet, Coral"s hues and rainbows there, And Teura"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....
_Tau 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.