The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke

“You gave me the key of your heart, my love;Then why did you make me knock?””

— Rupert Brooke

“I said I splendidly loved you; it’s not true.Such long swift tides stir not a land-locked sea.On gods or fools the high risk falls–on you–The clean clear bitter-sweet that’s not for me.Love soars from earth to ecstasies unwist.Love is flung Lucifer-like from Heaven to Hell.But–there are wanderers in the middle mist,Who cry for shadows, clutch, and cannot tellWhether they love at all, or, loving, whom:An old song’s lady, a fool in fancy dress,Or phantoms, or their own face on the gloom;For love of Love, or from heart’s loneliness.Pleasure’s not theirs, nor pain. They doubt, and sigh,And do not love at all. Of these am I””

— Rupert Brooke

“Spend the glittering moonlight therePursuing down the soundless deepLimbs that gleam and shadowy hair,Or floating lazy, half-asleep.Dive and double and follow after,Snare in flowers, and kiss, and call,With lips that fade, and human laughterAnd faces individual,Well this side of Paradise! . . .There's little comfort in the wise.””

— Rupert Brooke

“I have been so great a lover: filled my daysSo 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 bearOur hearts at random down the dark of life.Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strifeSteals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far,My night shall be remembered for a starThat outshone all the suns of all men's days.Shall I not crown them with immortal praiseWhom I have loved, who have given me, dared with meHigh secrets, and in darkness knelt to seeThe inenarrable godhead 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 namesGolden for ever, eagles, crying flames,And set them as a banner, that men may know,To dare the generations, burn, and blowved.””

— Rupert Brooke

“FailureBecause God put His adamantine fateBetween 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 beatThrice on the Gate, and entered with a cry --All the great courts were quiet in the sun,And full of vacant echoes: moss had grownOver the glassy pavement, and begunTo creep within the dusty council-halls.An idle wind blew round an empty throneAnd stirred the heavy curtains on the walls.””

— Rupert Brooke

“O dear my loves, O faithless, once againThis one last gift I give: that after menShall know, and later lovers, far-removed,Praise you, 'All these were lovely'; say, 'He loved.””

— Rupert Brooke

“. . . Do you think there's a far border town, somewhere, The desert's edge, last of the lands we know, Some gaunt eventual limit of our light, In which I'll find you waiting; and we'll go Together, hand in hand again, out there, Into the waste we know not, into the night?””

— Rupert Brooke

“I only know that you may lieDay long and watch the Cambridge sky,And, flower-lulled in sleepy grass,Hear the cool lapse of hours pass””

— Rupert Brooke

“She was in his eyes, but he could not see her.And he was England, but he knew her not.””

— Rupert Brooke