Noctivagations Book

The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke

Rupert Brooke was known as an idealist poet and at the age of his death, 27, in 1915 he was quite popular. It is true that he was blessed with good looks, but his writing and poetry were known in Europe and the U.S as he worked in several literary circles in addition to his many publicly romantic entanglements. He enlisted early on in the War but died a short time later of an infection before he seeing heavy action while on a troop ship near the Greek isle of Skyros, reportedly from an infected mosquito bite.

His poem "The Soldier" along with Owen's "Dulce et Decorum est" are arguably the two most famous poems from the war period. Brooke's romantic poetry contrasts heavily with fellow poets, like Owen, who fought in the trenches and experienced the worst horrors of war first hand. From a literary perspective, we can only speculate about the direction of Brooke's poetry if he had lived to fight in the Battle of Gallipoli.

4 stars. Most of the poems are quite short and he was not much of an experimentalist evidenced by his standard rhyme schemes but the beauty shines through in many of the poems and is largely why he was revered. All poems from this collection are in the public domain. There are two poems that I especially loved, Failure and The Soldier

Failure

Because God put His adamantine fate
Between my sullen heart and its desire,
I swore that I would burst the Iron Gate,
Rise up, and curse Him on His throne of fire.
Earth shuddered at my crown of blasphemy,
But Love was as a flame about my feet;
Proud up the Golden Stair I strode; and beat
Thrice on the Gate, and entered with a cry '

All the great courts were quiet in the sun,
And full of vacant echoes: moss had grown
Over the glassy pavement, and begun
To creep within the dusty council-halls.
An idle wind blew round an empty throne
And stirred the heavy curtains on the walls.


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.