Rupert Brooke

When you were there, and you, and you, Happiness crowned the night;
I too, Laughing and looking, one of all, I watched the quivering lamplight fall On plate and flowers and pouring
And cup and cloth; and they and we Flung all the dancing...

When the white flame in us is gone,
And we that lost the world's
Stiffen in darkness, left alone To crumble in our separate night;
When your swift hair is quiet in death,

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,

Safe in the magic of my woods I lay, and watched the dying light
Faint in the pale high solitudes,
And washed with rain and veiled by night,
Silver and blue and green were showing

I strayed about the deck, an hour,
Under a cloudy moonless sky; and
In at the windows, watched my friends at table,
Or playing cards, or standing in the doorway,

Love is a breach in the walls, a broken gate,
Where that comes in that shall not go again;
Love sells the proud heart's citadel to Fate
They have known shame, who love unloved

All in the town were still asleep,
When the sun came up with a shout and a leap
In the lonely streets unseen by man,
A little dog danced

In your arms was still delight,
Quiet as a street at night;
And thoughts of you,
I do remember,

Tenderly, day that I have loved,
I close your eyes,
And smooth your quiet brow, and fold your thin dead hands
The grey veils of the half-light deepen; colour dies

Just now the lilac is in bloom,
All before my little room;
And in my flower-beds,
I think,

Hand trembling towards hand; the amazing
Of heart and eye
They stood on supreme heights
Ah, the delirious weeks of honeymoon

I dreamt I was in love again With the One Before the Last,
And smiled to greet the pleasant pain Of that innocent young past
But I jumped to feel how sharp had been The pain when it did live,
How the faded dreams of Nineteen-ten Wer...