Home > Work > 1914, and Other Poems
1 " All the day I held the memory of you, and woveIts laughter with the dancing light o' the spray,And sowed the sky with tiny clouds of love... "
― Rupert Brooke , 1914, and Other Poems
2 " 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. "
3 " That night, how could I sleep?I lay and watched the lonely gloom;And watched the moonlight creepFrom wall to basin, round the room.All night I could not sleep. "
4 " If I should die, think only this of me:That there's some corner of a foreign fieldThat is for ever England. "
5 " 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 "
6 " Mamua, when our laughter ends, And hearts and bodies, brown as white, Are dust about the doors of friends, Or scent ablowing down the night, Then, oh! then, the wise agree, Comes our immortality. Mamua, there waits a land Hard for us to understand. Out of time, beyond the sun, All are one in Paradise, You and Pupure are one, And Taü, 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, Teïpo's feet, And the hands of Matua, Stars and sunlight there shall meet, Coral's hues and rainbows there, And Teüra'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 evening's after-green, And dawns of pearl and gold and red, Mamua, your lovelier head! 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.... Taü here, Mamua, Crown the hair, and come away! Hear the calling of the moon, And the whispering scents 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, Mamua, 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. "