The Dead
Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!
There's none of these so lonely and poor of old,
But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold
These laid the world away; poured out the red
Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be
Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene,
That men call age; and those who would have been,
Their sons, they gave, their immortality.
Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth,
Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain.
Honour has come back, as a king, to earth,
And paid his subjects with a royal wage;
And Nobleness walks in our ways again;
And we have come into our heritage.
Here is Rupert Brooke's most famous poem:
The Soldier
I f 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.
I am really enjoying these poems...thanks so much
for posting them Piffka!
*The Non-Glorious Dead*
Here's a couple of comments on this poem. Brooke wrote it and I don't even think he ever faced active service but made his great war effort with stirring lines to send more young Englanders to the merry 1st world war slaughter:
*If I should die, think only this of me:*
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Clearly not dead yet! Maybe this poem was written with a ouija board ..
Maybe he is better off dead anyway with this pretensious nonsense?
*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.*
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The poet expresses how he has got the hots for England.
Nothing turns him on more than the idea of all these people being sent to the front line.
(And who wind up dead.)
By now we are beginning to realise that this is no subject for a poem at all.
*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.*
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Mindless nonsense! Drivel even! What else to say? Beats me.
Any ideas?
from Second Best
HERE in the dark, O heart;
Alone with the enduring Earth, and Night,
And Silence, and the warm strange smell of clover;
Clear-visioned, though it break you; far apart
From the dead best, the dear and old delight;
Throw down your dreams of immortality,
O faithful, O foolish lover!
Thanks, Babs. Rupert Brooke was known as a poet before he went to war. Through his work as an officer in 1914 he became famous throughout Britain. He died in early 1915 from blood poisoning while on a ship headed to battle in the Mediterranean... the Dardanelles... and is buried on a Greek island.
He was a romantic poet, blessed with abilities and that rare honor enjoyed by few poets during their lifetime. Every soldier has the opportunity to look Death in the face, to wonder where he may be buried. I admire his ability to face death and find solace in it.
I have found a lot to like in his small body of work, especially the earlier work. There is joy and a fine showing of humor mixed with an appreciation of beauty. I wonder about his continuing to write poetry as he turned from a pursuit of love and friendship, to one of fighting and battle. He must have been afraid and wished to make himself be brave.
The beginning lines on this post are from the first segment (1905-1908) of this volume, which was printed in the year of his death. All told, the entire collection is encompassed within 145 pages of poetry. He was well-bred, well-educated, born to wealth and good-looking, the epitome of upper-class England. For those who are interested, here is a handsome photograph and some biographical information:
Rupert Brooke photo & historical significance to WWI
I, Sodium Laureate Hydroxychloride ...
SIMPLE OBJECT ACCESS PROTOCOL
I, Sodium Laureate Hydrochloride:
Chief executive disinformator.
This voice came into my bathroom. 'My SOAP!'
it said, 'I know exactly what they meant,
those rubber ducks with their doubt and dogma.
Of course the world might simply end,
and we and our companions topple into hell?
together, into nothing, into silence-spirals
and the gulf stream that wash us down the holy plughole...'
(Sorry! Forgot to entitle.)
Goodbye able2know.com
What was the poem about?
It is actually about events as I take a bath and my thoughts about this.
It therefore has nothing to do with personal hygiene except that it does at least demonstrate that I take a bath or two each day.
It is not really an anti-war poem either however I would lean towards this rather than a personal hygiene theme.
*Brief but exciting?*
Are you Able 2 Know, Able 2 Know?
I like Rupert Brooke but I like Wilfred Owen even better
Wilfred Owen
Dulce Et Decorum Est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.
GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
