Rupert Brooke

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,

Through my heart's palace Thoughts unnumbered throng;
And there, most quiet and, as a child, most wise,
High-throned you sit, and gracious
All day long Great Hopes gold-armoured, jester Fantasies,

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...

From the candles and dumb shadows,
And the house where love had died,
I stole to the vast moonlight And the whispering life outside
But I found no lips of comfort,

Opposite me two Germans snore and sweat
Through sullen swirling gloom we jolt and roar
We have been here for ever:  even yet A dim watch tells two hours, two aeons, more
The windows are tight-shut and slimy-wet With a night's foetor

Stars that seem so close and bright,
Watched by lovers through the night,
Swim in emptiness, men say,
Many a mile and year away

My restless blood now lies a-quiver,
Knowing that always, exquisitely,
This April twilight on the river Stirs anguish in the heart of me
For the fast world in that rare glimmer Puts on the witchery of a dream,

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

The damned ship lurched and slithered
Quiet and quick My cold gorge rose; the long sea rolled;
I knewI must think hard of something, or be sick;
And could think hard of only one thing —

Down the blue night the unending columns press In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow,
Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of
Up to the white moon's hidden loveliness
Some pause in their grave wandering comradeless,

There was a damned successful Poet;
There was a Woman like the Sun
And they were dead
They did not know it