 Poem No. 52 of the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke Read for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman 1914 No. 2 Safety Dear of all happy in the hour, most blessed he who has found our hid security, assured in the dark tides of the world that rest, and heard our word, who is so safe as we? We have found safety with all things undying, the winds and mourning, tears of men and mirth, the deep night, and birds singing, and clouds flying, and sleep, and freedom, and the autumnal earth. We have built a house that is not four times throwing, we have gained a peace unshaken by pain for ever, war knows no power, safe shall be my going, secretly armed against all deaths and ever, safe though all safety is lost, safe where men fall, and if these poor limbs die, safest of all. End of Poem No. 52, 1914 No. 2 Safety From the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke This recording is in the public domain. Poem No. 53 of the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke Read for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman 1914 No. 3 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. Though bugles blow, they brought us for our dearth, holiness lacked so long, and love and pain. Honor 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. Poem No. 53 1914 No. 3 The Dead From the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke This recording is in the public domain. Poem No. 54 of the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke Read for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman 1914 No. 4 The Dead These hearts were woven of human joys and cares, washed marvelously with sorrow, swift to mirth. The years had given them kindness, dawn was theirs and sunset and the colors of the earth. These had seen movement and heard music, known slumber and waking, loved, gone proudly friended, felt the quick stir of wonder, sat alone, touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended. There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter and lit by the rich skies all day, and after frost with a gesture stays the waves that dance and wandering loveliness. He leaves of white unbroken glory, a gathered radiance, a width, a shining peace, under the night. Poem No. 54 The Dead This recording is in the public domain. Poem No. 55 of the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke Read for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman 1914 No. 5 The Soldier If I should die, think only this of me, that there's some corner of a foreign field that is forever 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, blessed by sons 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 learned of friends, and gentleness in hearts at peace under an English heaven. Poem No. 55 The Treasure When colour goes home into the eyes, and lights that shine are shut again, with dancing girls and sweet birds cries behind the gateways of the brain, and that no place which gave them birth shall close the rainbow and the rose. Still may time hold some golden space, where I'll unpack that scented store of song and flower and sky and face, and count and touch, and turn them o'er musing upon them. As a mother who has watched her children all the rich day through, sits quiet-handed in the fading light when children sleep, air-night. End of Poem No. 56 The Treasure From the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poem No. 57 of the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke Read for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman. Tiare Tahiti Mamoua, when our laughter ends, and hearts and bodies, brown as white, are dust about the doors of friends, or scent of blowing down the night, then, oh, then, the whys agree, comes our immortality. Mamoua, there waits a land hard for us to understand. Out of time, beyond the sun, all are one in paradise. You and Poupere are one, and Tau, and the ungainly wise. There the eternals are, and there the good, the lovely, and the true, and types whose earthly copies were the foolish, broken things we knew. There is the face, whose ghosts we are. The real, the never-setting star. And the flower, of which we love faint and fading shadows here. Never a tear, but only grief, dance, but not the limbs that move. Songs in song shall disappear. Instead of lovers, love shall be, for hearts, immutability. And there, on the ideal reef, thunders the everlasting sea. And my laughter, and my pain, shall home to the eternal brain. And all lovely things, they say, meet in loveliness again. Miri's laugh, Taipo's feet, and the hands of Matua, stars and sunlight there shall meet. Coral's hues and rainbows there, and Teura's braided hair. And with the starred tiare's white, and white birds in the dark ravine, and flamboyants ablaze at night, and jewels, and evenings after-green, and dawns of pearl and gold and red, Mamoua, your lovely ahead. And there'll no more be one who dreams under the ferns of crumbling stuff, eyes of illusion, mouth that seems all-time entangled human love. And you'll no longer swing and sway divinely down the scented shade, where feet to ambulation fade, and moons are lost in endless day. How shall we wind these wreaths of ours, where there are neither heads nor flowers? Oh, heaven's heaven! But we'll be missing the palms and sunlight and the south. And there's an end, I think, of kissing, when our mouths are one with mouth. Tau here, Mamoua, crown the hare and come away, hear the calling of the moon, and the whispering sense that stray about the idle warm lagoon, hasten hand in human hand, down the dark, the flowered way, along the whiteness of the sand, and in the water's soft caress wash the mind of foolishness, Mamoua, until the day. Spend the glittering moonlight there, pursuing down the soundless deep limbs 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 laughter, and faces individual, well this side of paradise. There's little comfort in the wise. End of poem number fifty-seven, Tiare Tahiti, from the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poem number fifty-eight of the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke, read for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman. In your arms was still delight, quiet as a street at night, and thoughts of you, I do remember, were green leaves in a darkened chamber, were dark clouds in a moonless sky. Love in you went passing by, penetrative, remote, and rare, like a bird in the wide air, and as the bird it left no trace in the heaven of your face. In your stupidity I found the sweet hush after a sweet sound. All about you was the light that dims the graying end of night. Desire was the unrisened sun, joy the day not yet begun, with tree whispering to a tree without wind quietly. Wisdom slept within your hair, and long-suffering was there, and in the flowing of your dress undiscerning tenderness. And when you thought, it seemed to me, infinitely and like a sea, about the slight world you had known, your vast unconsciousness was thrown. O haven without wave or tide, silence in which all songs have died, holy book where hearts are still, and home at length under the hill. O mother quiet breasts of peace, where love itself would faint and cease. O infinite deep I never knew, I would come back, come back to you, find you as a pool unstirred, kneel down by you, and never a word lay my head and nothing said in your hands ungarlanded, and a long watch you would keep. And I should sleep, and I should sleep. End of poem number fifty-eight, Retrospect from the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poem number fifty-nine of the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke, Read for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman. The Great Lover I have been so great a lover, filled my days so 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 bear our hearts at random down the dark of life. Now ere the unthinking silence on that strife steals down, I would cheat drowsy death so far, my night shall be remembered for a star that outshone all the sons of all men's days. Shall I not crown them with immortal praise, whom I have loved, who have given me, dared with me, high secrets, and in darkness knelt to see the inenarable Godhead of delight? Love is a flame, we have beacons 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 loyalt is young, I'll write those names golden forever, eagles, crying flames, and set them as a banner that men may know, to dare the generations burn and blow out on the wind of time shining and streaming. These I have loved, white plates and cups clean gleaming ringed with blue lines, and feathery fairy dust, wet roofs beneath the lamplight, the strong crust of friendly bread, and many tasting food, rainbows and the blue bitter smoke of wood, and radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers, and flowers themselves that sway through sunny hours dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon, then the cool kindliness of sheets that soon smooth away trouble, and the rough male kiss of blankets, grainy wood, live hair that is shining and free, blue massing clouds, the keen unpassioned beauty of a great machine, the benison of hot water, furs to touch, the good smell of old clothes, and others such the comfortable smell of friendly fingers, hairs, fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers about dead leaves and last year's ferns. Dear names, and thousand other throng to me, royal flames, sweet waters dimpling laugh from tap or spring, holes in the ground, and voices that do sing, voices in laughter too, and body's pain soon turned to peace, and the deep panting train, firm sands, the little dulling edge of foam that browns and dwindles as the wave goes home, and washing stones gay for an hour, the cold graveness of iron, moist black earthen mould, sleep and high places, footprints in the dew, and oaks, and brown horse chestnuts glossy new, and new peeled sticks and shining pools on grass, all these have been my loves, and these shall pass whatever passes not in the great hour, nor all my passion, all my prayers have power to hold them with me through the gate of death. They'll play deserter, turn with the traitor breath, break the high bond we made, and sell love's trust and sacramentate covenant to the dust. Oh, never a doubt, but somewhere I shall wake, and give what's left of love again, and make new friends, now strangers. But the best I've known stays here, and changes, breaks, grows old, is blown about the winds of the world, and fades from brains of living men, and dies. Nothing remains. Oh, dear my loves, oh faithless, once again this one last gift I give, that after men shall know, and later lovers far removed, praise you, all these were lovely. Say, he loved. And of poem number fifty-nine, The Great Lover, from the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poem number sixty, of the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke, read for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman. Heaven. Fish fly replete in depth of dune, dawdling away their watery noon, ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear, each secret fishy hope or fear. Fish say they have their stream and pond, but is there anything beyond? This life cannot be all, they swear, for how unpleasant if it were. One may not doubt that somehow good shall come of water and of mud, and sure the reverent eye must see a purpose in liquidity. We darkly know by faith we cry, the future is not wholly dry. Mud unto mud, death is near, not here the appointed end, not here, but somewhere beyond space and time, is wetter water slimy as slime. And there they trust their swimmeth one, whose swam air rivers were begun, immense of fishy form and mind, squamous, omnipotent, and kind. And under that almighty fin the littlest fish may enter in. O never fly conceals a hook fish say in the eternal brook, but more than mundane weeds are there, and mud celestially fair, fat caterpillars drift around, and paradisal grubs are found, unfading moths, immortal flies, and the worm that never dies. And in that heaven of all their wish there shall be no more land, say fish. End of poem number sixty, Heaven, from the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poem number sixty-one of the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. Read for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman. When she sleeps her soul I know goes a wanderer on the air, wings where I may never go, leaves her lying still and fair, waiting empty laid aside like a dress upon a chair. This I know, and yet I know doubts that will not be denied. For if the soul be not in place, what has laid trouble in her face, and sits there nothing where and wise behind the curtains of her eyes, what is it in the self-sick clips, shadows soft and passingly about the corners of her lips, the smile that is essential she? And if the spirit be not there, why is fragrance in the hair? End of poem number sixty-one, Doubts, from the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poem number sixty-two of the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. Read for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman. There's wisdom in women. Oh, love is fair and love is rare, my dear one, she said, but love goes lightly over. I bowed her foolish head and kissed her hair and laughed at her. Such a child was she so new to love, so true to love, and she spoke so bitterly. But there's wisdom in women of more than they have known, and thoughts go blowing through them are wiser than their own, or how should my dear one, being ignorant and young, have cried on love so bitterly, with so true a tongue? End of poem number sixty-two, There's Wisdom in Women, from the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poem number sixty-three of the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. Read for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman. He wonders whether to praise or to blame her. I have peace to weigh your worth, now all is over. But if to praise or blame you cannot say, for who decries the loved decries the lover. Yet what man lords the thing he's thrown away! Be you in truth this dull, slight, cloudy nought, the more fool I, so greater fool to adore. But if you're that high goddess, once I thought, the more your godhead is, I lose the more. Dear fool, pity the fool who thought you clever! Dear wisdom, do not mock the fool that missed you! Most fair, the blind has lost your face for ever! Most foul, how could I see you while I kissed you? So the poor love of fools and blind I've proved you! For foul or lovely, it was a fool that loved you! End of Poem No. 63. He wonders whether to praise or to blame her from the collected poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poem No. 64 of the collected poems of Rupert Brooke. Read for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman. A Memory from a Sonnet Sequence. Some while before the dawn I rose, and stepped softly along the dim way to your room, and found you sleeping in the quiet gloom, and holiness about you as you slept. I knelt there, till your waking fingers crept about my head, and held it. I had rest, unhoped, this side of heaven beneath your breast. I knelt a long time, still, nor even wept. It was great wrong you did me, and for gain of that poor moment's kindliness, and ease, and sleepy mother-comfort. Child, you know how easily love leaps out to dreams like these, who has seen them true, and love that's wakened so, takes all too long to lay asleep again. End of Poem No. 64. A Memory from a Sonnet Sequence. From the collected poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poem No. 65 of the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. Red for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman. One Day Today I have been happy. All the day I held the memory of you, and wove its laughter with the dancing light of the spray, and sowed the sky with tiny clouds of love, and sent you following the white waves of sea, and crowned your head with fancies nothing worth, stray buds from that old dust of misery, being glad with a new foolish, quiet mirth. So lightly I played with those dark memories, just as a child, beneath the summer skies, plays hour by hour with a strange shining stone, for which, he knows not, towns were fire of old, and love has been betrayed, and murder done, and great kings turned to a little bitter mould. End of Poem No. 65. One Day From the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poem No. 66 of the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. Red for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman. Why Kiki? Warm perfumes, like a breath from vine and tree, drift down the darkness. Plangent, hidden from eyes, somewhere an ukulele thrills and cries, and stabs with pain the night's brown savagery, and dark scents whisper, and dim waves creep to me, gleam like a woman's hair stretch out and rise, and new stars burn into the ancient skies over the murmurous soft Hawaiian sea. And I recall, lose, grasp, forget again, and still remember a tale I have heard or known, an empty tale of idleness and pain of two that loved, or did not love, and one whose perplexed heart did evil foolishly, a long while since, and by some other sea. End of Poem No. 66. Why Kiki? From the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poem No. 67 of the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. Red for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman. Hauntings. In the gray tumult of these after-years, oft silence falls, the incessant wrangler's part, and less than echoes of remembered tears, hush all the loud confusion of the heart, and a shade through the tossed ranks of mirth and crying, hungers and pains, and each dull, passionate mood, quite lost, and all but all forgot, undying, comes back the ecstasy of your quietude. So a poor ghost, beside his misty streams, is haunted by strange doubts, evasive dreams, hints of a prelethean life, of men, stars, rocks, and flesh, things unintelligible, and light on waving grass, he knows not when, and feet that ran, but where he cannot tell. End of Poem No. 67, Hauntings. From the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poem No. 68 of the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. Red for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman. Sonnet. Suggested by some of the proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. Not with vain tears, when we are beyond the sun, we'll beat on the substantial doors, nor tread those dusty high roads of the aimless dead, plaintive for earth. But rather turn and run down some close-covered byway of the air, some low sweet alley between wind and wind, stoop under faint gleams, thread the shadows, find some whispering ghost-forgotten nook, and there spend in pure converse our eternal day. Think each in each immediately wise, learn all we lacked before, hear, know, and say what this tumultuous body now denies, and feel who have laid our groping hands away, and see no longer blinded by our eyes. End of Poem No. 68. Sonnet. Suggested by some of the proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. From the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poem No. 69 of the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. Read for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman. Clouds. 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 snow up to the white moon's hidden loveliness. Some pours in their grave wandering come redless, and turn with profound gesture vague and slow, as who would pray good for the world, but know their benediction empty as they bless. They say that the dead die not, but remain near to the rich heirs of their grief and mirth. I think they ride the car mid-heaven as these, in wise majestic melancholy train, and watch the moon and the still raging seas, and men coming and going on the earth. End of Poem No. 69. Clouds. From the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poem No. 70 of the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. Read for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman. Mutability. They say there's a high windless world and strange, out of the wash of days and temporal tide, where faith and good, wisdom and truth abide, eternal corpora subject to no change. There the sure suns of these pale shadows move, there stand the immortal enzymes of our war, our melting flesh fixed beauty there, a star, and perishing heart's imperishable love. Dear, we know only that we sigh, kiss, smile. Each kiss lasts but the kissing, and grief goes over. Love has no habitation but the heart. Poor straws, on the dark flood we catch a while, cling, and are born into the night apart. The laugh dies with the lips. Love with the lover. End of Poem No. 70, Mutability, From the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poem No. 71 of the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. Read for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman. The Busy Heart. Now that we've done our best and worst and partied, I would fill my mind with thoughts that will not rend. O heart, I do not dare go empty-hearted. I'll think of love in books, love without end. Women with child content, and old men sleeping, and wet strong plowlands scarred for certain grain, and babes that weep, and so forget their weeping, and the young heavens forgetful after rain, and evening hush broken by homing wings, and songs nobility and wisdom holy that live we dead. I would think of a thousand things lovely and durable, and taste them slowly, one after one, like tasting a sweet food. I have need to busy my heart with quietude. End of Poem No. 71, The Busy Heart, From the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. End No. 72, Of the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke, Red for LibriVox.org, by Graham Redman. Love. Love is a breach in the walls, a broken gate, where that comes in that shall not go again. Love sells the proud heart citadel to fate. They have known shame, who love unloved. Even then, when two mouths thirsty each for each find slaking, and agonies forgot, and hushed the crying of credulous hearts in heaven, such are but taking their own poor dreams within their arms, and lying each in his lonely night, each with a ghost. Some share that night, but they know love grows colder, grows false and dull, that was sweet lies at most. Astonishment is no more in hand or shoulder, but darkens, and dies out from kiss to kiss. All this is love, and all love is but this. End of Poem No. 72, Love, From the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke, Red for LibriVox.org, by Graham Redman. Unfortunate. But you are restless as a paper strap that's tossed down dusty pavements by the wind, saying she is most wise, patient and kind. Between the small hands folded in her lap, surely a shamed head may bow down at length, and find forgiveness where the shadows stir about her lips, and wisdom in her strength. Peace in her peace. Come to her, come to her. She will not care. She'll smile to see me come, so that I think all heaven in flower to fold me. She'll give me all I ask, kiss me and hold me, and open wide upon that holy air the gates of peace, and take my tiredness home kinder than God. But heart she will not care. End of Poem No. 73, Unfortunate, From the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poem No. 74, Of the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. RedfellibriVox.org, by Graham Redman. The Chiltons. Your hands, my dear, adorable, your lips of tenderness, oh, I've loved you faithfully and well three years, or a bit less. It wasn't a success. Take God that's done, and I'll take the road, quit of my youth and you, the Roman road to wend over by Tring and Lily who, as a free man may do. For youth goes over, the joys that fly, the tears that follow fast, and the dirtiest things we do must lie forgotten at the last. Even love goes past. What's left behind I shall not find, the splendour and the pain, the splash of sun, the shouting wind, and the brave sting of rain I may not meet again. But the years that take the best away give something in the end, and a better friend than love have they, for none to mar or mend, that have themselves to friend. I shall desire, and I shall find the best of my desires, the autumn road, the mellow wind that soothes the darkening shires, and laughter and infires, white mist about the black hedgerows, the slumbering midland plain, the silence where the clover grows, and the dead leaves in the lane, certainly these remain. And I shall find some girl, perhaps, and a better one than you, with eyes as wise, but kindlier, and lips as soft, but true. And I dare say she will do. End of poem number seventy-four, The Chiltons, From the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poem number seventy-five of The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. Red for Librivox.org by Graham Redman. Home I came back late and tired last night into my little room, to the long chair, and the fire-light, and comfortable gloom. But as I entered softly in, I saw a woman there, the line of neck and cheek and chin, the darkness of her hair, the form of one I did not know, sitting in my chair. I stood a moment, fierce and still, watching her neck and hair. I made a step to her, and saw that there was no one there. It was some trick of the fire-light that made me see her there. It was a chance of shade and light and the cushion in the chair. Oh, all you happy over the earth, that night how could I sleep? I lay and watched the lonely gloom, and watched the moonlight creep from wall to basin round the room. All night I could not sleep. End of Poem No. 75, Home, From the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poem No. 76 of the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke, Red for Librivox.org by Graham Redman. The Night Journey Thirsty for dark, you feel the long-limbed train-throb, stretch, thrill-motion, slide, pull out and sway, strain for the far, pause, draw to strength again. As a man, caught by some great hour, will rise slow-limbed to meet the light or find his love, and, breathing long with staring, sightless eyes, hands out, head back, agape and silent, move sure as a flood, smooth as a vast wind blowing, and gathering power and godhead as he goes, unstumbling, unreluctant, strong, unknowing, born by a will not his, that lifts, that grows, sweep into darkness, triumphing to his goal, out of the fire, out of the little room. There is an end appointed, oh my soul, crimson and green the signals burn, the gloom is hung with steam's fantastic livid streamers, lost into God as lights in light we fly, grown one with will, end drunken, huddled dreamers. The white lights roar, the sounds of the world die, and lips and laughter are forgotten things. Speed sharpens, grows, into the night and on the strength and splendour of our purpose swings. The lamps fade, and the stars. We are alone, end of poem number seventy-six, The Night Journey, from the Collected Poins of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poin number seventy-seven of the Collected Poins of Rupert Brooke, read for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman. All suddenly the wind comes soft, and spring is here again, and the hawthorn quickens with buds of green, and my heart with buds of pain. My heart all winter lay so numb, the earth so dead and fraught, that I never thought the spring would come, or my heart wake any more. But winter's broken, and earth has woken, and the small birds cry again, and the hawthorn hedge puts forth its buds, and my heart puts forth its pain. End of poem number seventy-seven, Song, from the Collected Poins of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poin number seventy-eight of the Collected Poins of Rupert Brooke, read for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman. Beauty and Beauty When beauty and beauty meet all naked, fair to fair, the earth is crying sweet, and scattering bright the air, eddying, dizzying, closing round with soft and drunken laughter, veiling all that may befall after, after. Where beauty and beauty met, earth's still a tremble there, and the winds are scented yet, and memory soft the air, bosoming, folding glints of light, and shreds of shadowy laughter, not the tears that fill the years after, after. End of poem number seventy-eight, Beauty and Beauty, from the Collected Poins of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poin number seventy-nine of the Collected Poins of Rupert Brooke, read for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman. The Way That Lovers Use The way that lovers use is this. They bow, catch hands, with never a word, and their lips meet, and they do kiss. So I have heard. They clearly find some healing so, and strange attainment in the touch. There is a secret lovers know. I have read as much. And there's no longer joy nor smart, changing or ending night or day, but mouth to mouth and heart on heart. So lovers say. End of poem number seventy-nine, The Way That Lovers Use, from the Collected Poins of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poin number eighty of the Collected Poins of Rupert Brooke, read for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman. Mary and Gabriel Young Mary, loitering once her garden way, Felt a warm splendour grow in the April day, As wine that blushes water through, And soon, out of the gold-air of the afternoon, One knelt before her, Hair he had, or fire, Bound back above his ears with golden wire, Bearing the eager marble of his face. What man's nor woman's was the immortal grace Rounding the limbs beneath that robe of white, And lighting the proud eyes With changeless light incurious. Calm as his wings and fair, That presence filled the garden. She stood there, saying, What would you, sir? He told his word, Blessed art thou of women. Half she heard hands folded and face bowed, Half long had known the message of that clear and holy tone That fluttered hot sweet sobs about her heart. Such serene tidings moved such human smart. Her breath came quick as little flakes of snow, Her hands crept up her breast. She did but know it was not hers. She felt a trembling stir within her body, A will too strong for her that held and filled and mastered all. With eyes closed, and a thousand soft, short, broken sighs, She gave submission, fearful, meek, and glad. She wished to speak. Under her breast she had such multitudinous burnings, too, and fro, And throbs not understood. She did not know if they were hurt or joy for her, But only that she was grown strange to herself, half lonely, All wonderful, filled full of pains to come, And thoughts she dare not think, Swift thoughts and dumb, human and quaint, Her own yet very far, divine, dear, Terrible, familiar. Her heart was faint for telling, To relate her limb's sweet treachery, Her strange high estate over and over, Whispering, half revealing, weeping, And so find kindness to her healing. Twixed tears and laughter, panic hurrying her, She raised her eyes to that fair messenger. He knelt unmoved, immortal, With his eyes gazing beyond her, Come to the calm skies, radiant, untroubled in his wisdom, kind, His sheaf of lilies stirred not in the wind. How should she, pitiful with mortality, Try the wide piece of that felicity, With ripples of her perplexed, shaken heart, And hints of human ecstasy, human smart, And whispers of the lonely weight she bore, And how her womb within was hers no more, And at length hers. Being tired, she bowed her head, And said, So be it. The great wings were spread, showering glory On the fields and fire. The whole air singing bore him up, And higher, unswerving, unreluctant. Soon he shone a gold speck In the gold skies, then was gone. The air was colder and gray. She stood alone, end of poem number eighty, Mary and Gabriel, On the collected poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poem number eighty-one of the collected poems of Rupert Brooke, Read for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman. The Funeral of Youth, Threnody. The day that youth had died, there came to his graveside, In decent mourning, from the country's ends, Those scattered friends who had lived the boon companions of his prime, And laughed with him, and sung with him, And wasted in feast and wine and many crowned carous, The days and nights and dawnings Of the time when youth kept open house. More left untasted, o'er of his high emprize And venture's dear, no quest of his unshared. All these, with loitering feet and sad head, Bared, followed their old friend's beer. Folly went first, with muffled bells And coxcomes still reversed, And after trod the bearers hat in hand. Sister most horse, and captain pride, With tanned and marshal face all grim, And fussy joy, who had to catch a train, And lust poor snivelling boy. These bore the dear departed. Behind them broken-hearted came grief, So noisy a widow that all said, Had he but wed her elder sister sorrow in her stead. And by her trying to soothe her all the time, The fatherless children, color, tune, and rhyme, The sweet lad rhyme, ran all uncomprehending. Then at the way's sad ending, Round the raw grave they stayed. Old wisdom read in mumbling tone The service for the dead. There stood romance, the furrowing tears Had marked her rouged cheek. Poor old conceit, his wonder unasswaged, Dead innocence's daughter ignorance, And shabby ill-dressed generosity, And argument too full of woe to speak. One grown portly, something middle-aged, And friendship, not a minute older she. Impatience ever taking out his watch, Faith, who was deaf, and had to lean to catch Old wisdom's endless drone. Beauty was there, pale in her black, Dry eyed. She stood alone. Poor May's imagination, fancy wild, Arder the sunlight on his graying hair, Contentment who had known youth as a child, And never seen him since. And spring came to dancing over the tombs, And brought him flowers. She did not stay for long. And truth, and grace, And all the merry crew, The laughing winds, and rivers, and lithe hours, And hope, the dewy eyed, and sorrowing song, Yes, with much woe and mourning general, At dead youth's funeral, even these were met once more together, All who urged the fair and living youth did know, All except only love. Love had died long ago. End of poem number 81, The Funeral of Youth, Threnody, From the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poem number 82 of the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. Read for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman. The Old Vicarage, Grantchester. Café des Vestens, Berlin, May 1912. Just now the lilac is in bloom all before my little room, And in my flower beds I think, Smile the carnation and the pink, And done the borders well I know, The poppy and the pansy blow. Oh, there the chestnuts summer through Beside the river make for you a tunnel of green gloom, And sleep deeply above, And green and deep the stream, Mysterious glides beneath, Green as a dream and deep as death. Oh, damn, I know it, and I know how the Mayfields all golden show, And when the day is young and sweet, Guild gloriously the bare feet that run to bathe. Do Libra got? Here am I, sweating, sick, and hot, And there the shadowed waters fresh lean up To embrace the naked flesh. Temperamentful German Jews drink beer around, And there the dews are soft beneath a morn of gold. Here tulips bloom as they are told, Unkempt about those hedges blows, An English unofficial rose, And there the unregulated sun slopes Down to rest when day is done, And wakes a vague, unpunctual star, A slippered hesper, And there are meads towards Hazlingfield and Coten, Where d'as betretens not verboten. I fig and noimine, Would I were in Grantchester, in Grantchester. One it may be can get in touch with nature there, Or earth or such, And clever modern men have seen A fauna peeping through the green, And felt the classics were not dead To glimpse a niad's reedy head Or hear the goat-foot piping low. But these are things I do not know. I only know that you may lie day long And watch the Cambridge sky, And flower lulled in sleepy grass Hear the cool laps of hours pass Until the centuries blend and blur In Grantchester, in Grantchester. Still, in the dawn-lit waters cool, His ghostly lordship swims his pool, And dries the strokes, essays the tricks Long learnt on helispont or sticks. Dan Shorcer hears his river Still chatter beneath a phantom mill. Tennyson notes, with studious eye, How Cambridge waters hurry by. And in that garden, black and white, Creep whispers through the grass all night, And spectral dance before the dawn A hundred vickers down the lawn, Cure its long dust, will come and go On listen clerical, printless toe. And oft between the boughs Is seen the sly shade of a rural dean. Till at a shiver in the skies Vanishing with satanic dries, The primiclesiastic route leaves But a startled sleeper out, Grey heavens the first bird's drowsy calls, The falling house that never falls. God I will pack and take a train, And get me to England once again, For England's the one land I know Where men with splendid hearts may go, And Cambridgeshire of all England The shy awful men who understand, And of that district I prefer The lovely hamlet Grantchester. For Cambridge people rarely smile, Being urban, squat and packed with guile, And Royston men in the far south Are black and fierce and strange of mouth. Yet over they fling oaths at one, And worse than oaths at trumpington, And ditten girls are mean and dirty, And there's none in Haston under thirty, And folks in Shelford and those parts Have twisted lips and twisted hearts, And Barton men make cockney rhymes And cotons full of nameless crimes, And things are done you'd not believe But maddingly on Christmas eve. Strong men have run for miles and miles When one from Cherryhinton smiles. Strong men have blanched and shot their wives Rather than send them to St. Ives. Strong men have cried like babes by dam To hear of what happened at Babraham. But Grantchester? Ah, Grantchester! There's peace and holy quiet there, Great clouds along Pacific skies, And men and women with straight eyes, Lithe children lovelier than a dream, A bosky wood, a slumberous stream, And little kindly winds That creep round twilight corners half asleep. In Grantchester their skins are white, They bathe by day, they bathe by night, The women there do all they ought, The men observe the rules of thought. They love the good, they worship truth, They laugh uproariously in youth, And when they get to feeling old They up-and-shoot themselves, I'm told. Our God, to see the branches stir Across the moon at Grantchester, To smell the thrilling sweet and rotten, Unforgettable, unforgotten river-smell, And hear the breeze sobbing In the little trees. Say, do the elm-clumps greatly Stand still, guardians of that holy land? The chestnuts shade in reverent dream The yet unacademic stream. Is dawn a secret, shy and cold, Anadiominy silver-gold? And sunset still a golden sea From hazling fields to maddingly? And after ere the night is born Do hares come out about the corn? Oh, is the water sweet and cool, Gentle and brown above the pool? And laughs the immortal river Still under the mill, under the mill? Say, is there beauty yet to find, And certainty and quiet kind? Keep meadows yet for to forget The lies and truths and pain. Oh, yet stands the church-clock at ten to three, And is there honey still for tea. End of poem number eighty-two, The Old Vicarage Grantchester, From the collected poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poem number eighty-three of the collected poems of Rupert Brooke. Read for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman. Fa-tha-ya! Stars that seem so close and bright Watched by lovers through the night, Swim in emptiness, men say, Many a mile and year away. And yonder-star that burns so white May have died to dust and night ten, May be or fifteen-year Before it shines upon my dear. Oh, often among men below Heart cries out to heart, I know, And one is dust a many years, Child, before the other hears. But from heart is all as far Fa-tha-ya! as star from star. End of poem number eighty-three, Fa-tha-ya! From the collected poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poem number eighty-four of the collected poems of Rupert Brooke. Read for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman. Fragment I strayed about the deck an hour to-night Under a cloudy moonless sky, And peeped in at the windows, Watched my friends at table, or playing cards, Or standing in the doorway, Or coming out into the darkness. Still no one could see me. I would have thought of them, heedless within a week of battle, In pity, pride in their strength, And in the weight and firmness, And linked beauty of bodies, And pity that this gay machine Of splendour had soon be broken Thought little of, pash-scattered. Only always I could but see them Against the lamp-light, Us like coloured shadows, Thinner than filmy glass, Slight bubbles, fainter than the waves, Faint light, That broke to phosphorous out in the night, Perishing things and strange ghosts, Soon to die to other ghosts. This one, or that, or I. End of Poem No. 84 Fragment from the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poem No. 85 of the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke, Read for LibritVox.org by Graham Redman. The Dance A Song As the wind, and as the wind, In a corner of the way, Goes skipping, stands twirling, Invisibly, comes twirling, Bows before, and skips behind, In a grave and endless play. So my heart, and so my heart, Following where your feet have gone, Sturs dust of old dreams there, He turns a toe, he gleams there, Treading you a dance apart. But you see not, you pass on. End of Poem No. 85, the Dance, From the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poem No. 86 of the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke, Read for LibritVox.org by Graham Redman. Song The way of love was thus. He was born one winter morn, With hands delicious, and it was well with us. Love came our quiet way, lit pride in us, And died in us, All in a winter's day. There is no more to say. End of Poem No. 86, Song, From the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poem No. 87 of the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke, Read for LibritVox.org by Graham Redman. Sometimes even now, Sometimes even now I may steal a prisoner's holiday, Slip when all is worse to the bands, Hurry back and duck beneath Time's old tyrannous, Groping hands, speed away with laughing breath, Back to all I'll never know, Back to you a year ago. Truant there from time and pain, What I had I find again, Sunlight in the boughs above, Sunlight in your hair and dress, The hands too proud for all but love, The lips of utter kindliness, The heart of bravery swift and clean Where the best was safe I knew, And laughter in the golden green, And song and friends, And ever you with smiling and familiar eyes, You but friendly, you but true, And innocence accounted wise, And faith the fool the pitiable, Love so rare one would swear All of earth forever well, Careless lips and flying hair, And little things I may not tell. It does but double the heartache When I wake, when I wake. Sonnet in time of revolt, The thing must end, I am no boy, I am no boy, Being twenty-one, Uncle, you make a great mistake, A very great mistake, Inchiding me for letting slip a dam, What's more, you called me Mother's one you lamb, Bad me refrain from swearing for her Sake till I'm grown up. By God I think you take too much upon you, Uncle William. You say I am your brother's only son. I know it, and thought of it, I reply, My heart's resolved, Something must be done. So shall I curb, so baffle, So suppress this too avuncular officiousness, Intolerable consanguinity. End of poem number eighty-eight, Sonnet in time of revolt, From the collected poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poem number eighty-nine of the collected poems of Rupert Brooke, Read for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman. A Letter to a Live Poet Sir, since the last Elizabethan died, Or rather that more paradisal muse, Blind with much light, Past to the light more glorious, Or deeper blindness, No man's hand as thine has on the world's Most noblest chord of song Struck certain magic strains. Ears satiate with the clamorous, Timorous whisperings of today, Thrilled to perceive once more the spacious voice, And serene utterance of old. We heard, with rapturous breath half-held, As a dreamer dreams who dares not know it Dreaming lest he wake, The odorous, amorous style of poetry, The melancholy knocking of those lines, The long, low, suffering of pentameters, Or the sharp of rhyme as a bird's cry, And the innumerable truant polysyllables Multitudinously twittering like a bee. Fulfilled our hearts were with that music then, And all the evenings sighed it to the dawn, And all the lovers heard it from all the trees. All of the accents upon all the norms, And are the stress on the penultimate, We never knew blank verse could have such feat. Where is it now? Oh, more than ever now I sometimes think no poetry is read, Save where some sepultured caesura bled, Royally incarnadining all the line. Is the imperial I am laid to rest, And the young trochee having done enough? Our turn again, sing so to us who are sick Of seeming simple rhymes, Bizarre emotions decked in the simple verses of the day, Infinite meaning in a little gloom, Irregular thoughts in stanzas regular, Modern despair in antique meters, Myths incomprehensible at evening, And symbols that mean nothing in the dawn. The slow lines swell, the new style sighs, The kelt moans round with many voices. God to see gaunt anaphysts stand up out of the verse, Combative accents stress where no stress should be, Spondy on spondy I am on codium, The thrill of all the tribracks in the world, And all the vowels rising to the E, To hear the blessed mutter of those verbs, Conjunctions passionate towards each other's arms, And epithets like amaranthine lovers Stretching luxuriously to the stars, All prouder pronouns than the dawn, And all the thunder of the trumpets of the noun. End of poem number 89, A letter to a live poet from the collected poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poem number 90 of the collected poems of Rupert Brooke, Read for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman. Fragment on Painters There is an evil which that race attains, Who represent God's world with oily paints, Who mock the universe so rare and sweet, With spots of colour on a canvas sheet, Defile the lovely and insult the good By scrawling upon little bits of wood. There'd snare the moon and catch the immortal sun With madder brown and pale vermillion, In trap and English evening's magic hush. End of poem number 90, Fragment on Painters from the collected poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poem number 91 of the collected poems of Rupert Brooke, Read for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman. The True Beatitude Bousry May They say, when the great promptor's hand Shall ring down the last curtain upon earth and sea, All the good minds will have eternity To praise their author, Worship love and sing, Or to the walls of heaven wandering Look down on those damned for a fretful D. Mock them, all theologians agree On this reward for virtue, Laugh and fling new sulphur On the sin incarnadined. Our love, still temporal and still atmospheric, Teleologically unperturbed, We share a peace by no divine, divine, An earthly garden hidden from any cleric, Untrodden of God, by no eternal curbed. End of poem number 91, The True Beatitude from the collected poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poem number 92 of the collected poems of Rupert Brooke. Read for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman. Sonnet Reversed Hand trembling towards hand The amazing lights of heart and eye They stood on supreme heights. Ah, the delirious weeks of honeymoon! Soon they returned, and after strange adventures, Settled at Ballum by the end of June. Their money was in Can-Pak's Bee debentures, And in Antefagastas. Still he went, city-wood, daily, Still sheeded a bide at home, And both were really quite content With work and social pleasures. Then they died. They left three children, besides George, who drank, The eldest Jane, who married Mr. Bell, William, the head clerk in the county bank, And Henry, a stockbroker, doing well. End of poem number 92, Sonnet Reversed From the collected poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poem number 93 of the collected poems of Rupert Brooke. Read for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman. It's not going to happen again. I have known the most dear that has granted us here More supreme than the gods know above, Like a star I was hurled through the sweet of the world, And the height and the light of it, love. I have risen to the uttermost heaven of joy, I have sunk to the sheer hell of pain, But it's not going to happen again, my boy, It's not going to happen again. It's the very first word that poor Juliet heard From her Romeo over the sticks, And the Roman will tell Cleopatra in hell When she starts the immortal old tricks. What Paris was telling for good-bye to Helen When he bundled her into the train, Oh, it's not going to happen again, old girl. It's not going to happen again. End of poem number 93, It's not going to happen again. From the collected poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain. Poem number 94 of the collected poems of Rupert Brooke. Read for LibriVox.org by Graham Redman. The Little Dog's Day All in the town was still asleep When the sun came up with a shout and a leap. In the lonely streets unseen by man A little dog danced and the day began. All his life he had been good as far as he could, And the poor little beast had done all that he should. But this morning he swore by Odin and Thor And the canine Valhalla he had stand it no more. So his prayer he got granted To do just what he wanted Prevented by none for the space of one day. Jam incipiebo sederifesibo In dog Latin he quothed, U.J. Sophos, hooray! He fought with the he-dogs and winked at the she-dogs, A thing that had never been heard of before. For the stigma of gluttony I care not a button, He cried, and at all he could swallow and more. He took sinewy lumps from the shins of old frumps And mangled the errant boys when he could get them. He shamed furious rabies and bit all the babies And followed the cats up the trees and then Etem. They thought was the devil was holding a revel And sent for the parson to drive him away, For the town never knew such a hullabaloo As that little dog raised till the end of that day. When the blood-red sun had gone burning down And the lights were lit in the little town, Outside in the gloom of the twilight grey The little dog died when he'd had his day. End of poem number ninety-four, The Little Dog's Day, From the collected poems of Rupert Brooke. This recording is in the public domain.