Part 29 (1/2)
AFTERMATH
_Have you forgotten yet?..._ For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days, Like traffic checked a while at the crossing of city ways: And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow Like clouds in the lit heavens of life; and you're a man reprieved to go, Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
_But the past is just the same,--and War's a b.l.o.o.d.y game....
Have you forgotten yet?...
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget._
Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz,-- The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench,-- And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, ”Is it all going to happen again?”
Do you remember that hour of din before the attack,-- And the anger, the blind compa.s.sion that seized and shook you then As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back With dying eyes and lolling heads, those ashen-grey Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?
_Have you forgotten yet?...
Look up, and swear by the green of the Spring that you'll never forget._
_Rupert Brooke_
Possibly the most famous of the Georgians, Rupert Brooke, was born at Rugby in August, 1887, his father being a.s.sistant master at the school. As a youth, Brooke was keenly interested in all forms of athletics; playing cricket, football, tennis, and swimming as well as most professionals. He was six feet tall, his finely molded head topped with a crown of loose hair of lively brown; ”a golden young Apollo,” said Edward Thomas. Another friend of his wrote, ”to look at, he was part of the youth of the world. He was one of the handsomest Englishmen of his time.” His beauty overstressed somewhat his naturally romantic disposition; his early poems are a blend of delight in the splendor of actuality and disillusion in a loveliness that dies. The shadow of John Donne lies over his pages.
This occasional cynicism was purged, when after several years of travel (he had been to Germany, Italy and Honolulu) the war came, turning Brooke away from
”A world grown old and cold and weary ...
And half men, and their dirty songs and dreary, And all the little emptiness of love.”
Brooke enlisted with a relief that was like a rebirth; he sought a new energy in the struggle ”where the worst friend and enemy is but Death.” After seeing service in Belgium, 1914, he spent the following winter in a training-camp in Dorsets.h.i.+re and sailed with the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force in February, 1915, to take part in the unfortunate Dardenelles Campaign.
Brooke never reached his destination. He died of blood-poison at Skyros, April 23, 1915. His early death was one of England's great literary losses; Lascelles Abercrombie, W. W. Gibson (with both of whom he had been a.s.sociated on the quarterly, _New Numbers_), Walter De la Mare, the Hon. Winston Spencer Churchill, and a host of others united to pay tribute to the most brilliant and pa.s.sionate of the younger poets.
Brooke's sonnet-sequence, _1914_ (from which ”The Soldier” is taken), which, with prophetic irony, appeared a few weeks before his death, contains the accents of immortality. And ”The Old Vicarage, Grantchester” (unfortunately too long to reprint in this volume), is fully as characteristic of the lighter and more playful side of Brooke's temperament. Both these phases are combined in ”The Great Lover,” of which Abercrombie has written, ”It is life he loves, and not in any abstract sense, but all the infinite little familiar details of life, remembered and catalogued with delightful zest.”
THE GREAT LOVER[19]
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 suns 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 inenarrable G.o.dhead 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 names Golden for ever, 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, s.h.i.+ning and streaming....
These I have loved: White plates and cups, clean-gleaming, Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust; Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; 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 s.h.i.+ning and free; blue-ma.s.sing clouds; the keen Unpa.s.sioned beauty of a great machine; The benison of hot water; furs to touch; The good smell of old clothes; and other such-- The comfortable smell of friendly fingers, Hair's fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers About dead leaves and last year's ferns....