He believed, like Noyes, that love should not
be weak; that that was the great hope. Noyes said:
"But one thing is needful, and ye shall be true
To yourselves and the goal and the God that ye seek;
Yea, the day and the night shall requite it to you
If ye love one another if your love be not weak."
From Collected Poems of Alfred Noyes.
Now I do not mean to suggest that the love that Brooke sang was exactly
the type that Noyes sang in these four lines. In fact, one feels a
difference as he reads the two English poets, but they are alike in
that each agreed that Love should not be weak, whatever it was. Brooke
sang of romantic love, high and holy as that is; love of Youth for
Maiden, lad for lass, and man for woman; and thank God for the high
clean song that he gave to it in such lines as in "The Great Lover":
"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."
The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke.
And again in that same great poem:
"--Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake,
And give what's left of love again, and make
New friends, now strangers...."
The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke.
THE GOSPEL OF LOVE FOR ONE'S COUNTRY
And who shall say where the line of cleavage is between that love which
clings to Friends; and that greater or conjugal love which moulds man
and woman into one; and love for children, blood of one's blood, and
love of country; and love of God? I say that those who are truly the
great Lovers of the world love all of these and that not one is
omitted.
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