Modern British Poetry Part 29

AFTERMATH

_Have you forgotten yet?..._ For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days, Like traffic checked a while at the crossing of city ways: And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow Like clouds in the lit heavens of life; and you're a man reprieved to go, Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.

_But the past is just the same,--and War's a b.l.o.o.d.y game....

Have you forgotten yet?...

Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget._

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz,-- The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?

Do you remember the rats; and the stench Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench,-- And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?

Do you ever stop and ask, "Is it all going to happen again?"

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack,-- And the anger, the blind compa.s.sion that seized and shook you then As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?

Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back With dying eyes and lolling heads, those ashen-grey Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?

_Have you forgotten yet?...

Look up, and swear by the green of the Spring that you'll never forget._

_Rupert Brooke_

Possibly the most famous of the Georgians, Rupert Brooke, was born at Rugby in August, 1887, his father being a.s.sistant master at the school. As a youth, Brooke was keenly interested in all forms of athletics; playing cricket, football, tennis, and swimming as well as most professionals. He was six feet tall, his finely molded head topped with a crown of loose hair of lively brown; "a golden young Apollo," said Edward Thomas. Another friend of his wrote, "to look at, he was part of the youth of the world. He was one of the handsomest Englishmen of his time." His beauty overstressed somewhat his naturally romantic disposition; his early poems are a blend of delight in the splendor of actuality and disillusion in a loveliness that dies. The shadow of John Donne lies over his pages.

This occasional cynicism was purged, when after several years of travel (he had been to Germany, Italy and Honolulu) the war came, turning Brooke away from

"A world grown old and cold and weary ...

And half men, and their dirty songs and dreary, And all the little emptiness of love."

Brooke enlisted with a relief that was like a rebirth; he sought a new energy in the struggle "where the worst friend and enemy is but Death." After seeing service in Belgium, 1914, he spent the following winter in a training-camp in Dorsets.h.i.+re and sailed with the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force in February, 1915, to take part in the unfortunate Dardenelles Campaign.

Brooke never reached his destination. He died of blood-poison at Skyros, April 23, 1915. His early death was one of England's great literary losses; Lascelles Abercrombie, W. W. Gibson (with both of whom he had been a.s.sociated on the quarterly, _New Numbers_), Walter De la Mare, the Hon. Winston Spencer Churchill, and a host of others united to pay tribute to the most brilliant and pa.s.sionate of the younger poets.

Brooke's sonnet-sequence, _1914_ (from which "The Soldier" is taken), which, with prophetic irony, appeared a few weeks before his death, contains the accents of immortality. And "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester" (unfortunately too long to reprint in this volume), is fully as characteristic of the lighter and more playful side of Brooke's temperament. Both these phases are combined in "The Great Lover," of which Abercrombie has written, "It is life he loves, and not in any abstract sense, but all the infinite little familiar details of life, remembered and catalogued with delightful zest."

THE GREAT LOVER[19]

I have been so great a lover: filled my days So proudly with the splendour of Love's praise, The pain, the calm, and the astonishment, Desire illimitable, and still content, And all dear names men use, to cheat despair, For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear Our hearts at random down the dark of life.

Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strife Steals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far, My night shall be remembered for a star That outshone all the suns of all men's days.

Shall I not crown them with immortal praise Whom I have loved, who have given me, dared with me High secrets, and in darkness knelt to see The inenarrable G.o.dhead of delight?

Love is a flame;--we have beaconed the world's night.

A city:--and we have built it, these and I.

An emperor:--we have taught the world to die.

So, for their sakes I loved, ere I go hence, And the high cause of Love's magnificence, And to keep loyalties young, I'll write those names Golden for ever, eagles, crying flames, And set them as a banner, that men may know, To dare the generations, burn, and blow Out on; the wind of Time, s.h.i.+ning and streaming....

These I have loved: White plates and cups, clean-gleaming, Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust; Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food; Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood; And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers; And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours, Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon; Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is s.h.i.+ning and free; blue-ma.s.sing clouds; the keen Unpa.s.sioned beauty of a great machine; The benison of hot water; furs to touch; The good smell of old clothes; and other such-- The comfortable smell of friendly fingers, Hair's fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers About dead leaves and last year's ferns....

Dear names, And thousand others throng to me! Royal flames; Sweet water's dimpling laugh from tap or spring; Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing: Voices in laughter, too; and body's pain, Soon turned to peace; and the deep-panting train; Firm sands; the little dulling edge of foam That browns and dwindles as the wave goes home; And washen stones, gay for an hour; the cold Graveness of iron; moist black earthen mould; Sleep; and high places; footprints in the dew; And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new; And new-peeled sticks; and s.h.i.+ning pools on gra.s.s;-- All these have been my loves. And these shall pa.s.s.

Whatever pa.s.ses not, in the great hour, Nor all my pa.s.sion, all my prayers, have power To hold them with me through the gate of Death.

They'll play deserter, turn with the traitor breath, Break the high bond we made, and sell Love's trust And sacramented covenant to the dust.

--Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake, And give what's left of love again, and make New friends, now strangers....

But the best I've known, Stays here, and changes, breaks, grows old, is blown About the winds of the world, and fades from brains Of living men, and dies.

Nothing remains.

O dear my loves, O faithless, once again This one last gift I give: that after men Shall know, and later lovers, far-removed Praise you, "All these were lovely"; say, "He loved."

DUST[20]

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 s.h.i.+ne 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 pa.s.s, in light, to light,

Out of the garden higher, higher ...

But in that instant they shall learn The shattering fury of our fire, And the weak pa.s.sionless 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.

THE SOLDIER[21]

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.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] From _The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke_. Copyright, 1915, by John Lane Company and reprinted by permission.

[20] From _The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke_. Copyright, 1915, by John Lane Company and reprinted by permission.

[21] From _The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke_. Copyright, 1915, by John Lane Company and reprinted by permission.