The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke: With a Memoir

by Rupert Brooke

Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke

Rupert Brooke
1913

The Collected Poems
of Rupert Brooke:

With a Memoir

London: Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd.

3 Adam Street, Adelphi, W.C. 1918

First ImpressionJuly 1918
Second ImpressionAugust 1918

All rights reserved

Printed in Great Britain
by Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh

Contents

	PAGE
Memoir	xi

POEMS 1911-1914

1914

I. Peace	5
II. Safety	6
III. The Dead	7
IV. The Dead	8
V. The Soldier	9
The Treasure	10

THE SOUTH SEAS

Tiare Tahiti	13
Retrospect	16
The Great Lover	18
Heaven	21
Doubts	23
There's Wisdom in Women	24
He wonders whether to praise or to blame her	25
A Memory	26
One Day	27
Waikiki	28
Hauntings	29
Sonnet (Suggested by some of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research)	30
Clouds	31
Mutability	32

OTHER POEMS

The Busy Heart	35
Love	36
Unfortunate	37
The Chilterns	38
Home	40
The Night Journey	41
Song	43
Beauty and Beauty	44
The Way that Lovers use	45
Mary and Gabriel	46
The Funeral of Youth	49

GRANTCHESTER

The Old Vicarage, Grantchester

53

POEMS 1905-1911

1908—1911

Sonnet: "Oh! Death will find me"	63
Sonnet: "I said I splendidly loved you"	64
Success	65
Dust	66
Kindliness	68
Mummia	70
The Fish	72
Thoughts on the shape of the Human Body	75
Flight	77
The Hill	79
The One before the Last	80
The Jolly Company	82
The Life Beyond	83
Lines written in the Belief that the Ancient Roman Festival of the Dead was called Ambarvalia	84
Dead Men's Love	88
Town and Country	89
Paralysis	91
Menelaus and Helen	92
Lust	94
Jealousy	95
Blue Evening	97
The Charm	99
Finding	100
Song	102
The Voice	103
Dining-Room Tea	105
The Goddess in the Wood	108
A Channel Passage	109
Victory	110
Day and Night	111

EXPERIMENTS

Choriambics—I.	115
Choriambics—II.	117
Desertion	119

1905-1908

Second Best	123
Day that I have Loved	125
Sleeping Out: Full Moon	127
In Examination	129
Pine-Trees and the Sky: Evening	130
Wagner	131
The Vision of the Archangels	132
Seaside	133
On the Death of Smet-Smet	134
The Song of the Pilgrims	136
The Song of the Beasts	138
Failure	140
Ante Aram	141
Dawn	142
The Call	143
The Wayfarers	145
The Beginning	146

APPENDIX

"I strayed about the deck, an hour, to-night"	149
The Dance	150
Song	151
"Sometimes even now I may"	152
Sonnet in Time of Revolt	153
A Letter to a Live Poet	154
Fragment on Painters	156
The True Beatitude	157
Sonnet Reversed	158
The Little Dog's Day	159

Introduction

I feel that an apology is due to those who have been looking for some time for a Memoir of my son. The chief reason for the delay has been my great desire to gain the collaboration of some of his contemporaries at Cambridge and during his young manhood, for I believe strongly that they knew the largest part of him. Up to now it has been found impossible to do this, much as I should have wished it; and as since his death many of them have also laid down their lives, there is no longer any hope of doing so in the future. I have therefore consented to the Memoir coming out now, although it is of necessity incomplete. I cannot speak strongly enough of the ability and loving care that Mr Marsh has given to the work.

M. R. B.

April 1918

Note

This memoir was written in August 1915, a few months after Rupert Brooke's death, and my intention was to publish it with his collected poems in the course of that year. Circumstances prevented this, and now that three years have passed I ought probably to rewrite it in the changed perspective and on a different scale. As this is impossible for several reasons, I have had to be contented with a general revision, and the addition of letters which have since come into my hands.

I am very grateful to his Mother and to those of his friends who have allowed me to quote from his letters and from their accounts of him.

E. M.

April 1918.