At least the truly great Lovers have the capacity for love
of all these types. I have found no expression of paternal love in
Brooke, for he had not come to that great experience of life before
Death claimed him. And because Death robbed him of that experience
Death robbed us of a rare interpretation of that special type of Love.
But of all these other types which I have mentioned we have a clear
expression in the slender volume of poems that he left us as our
heritage from his estate. And, since we have already read one beautiful
expression of this love for his country in the opening paragraphs of
this chapter, we will add here another stanza of that noble expression
of his love for old England.
"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."
The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke.
What a voice for the times! What a voice for America! Would that some
American Brooke might arise to sing this same deep song.
A GOSPEL OF THE GODS
Rupert Brooke had a wide range of interests as indeed any great Lover
of Life and living must have. He expressed the hopelessness of the
heathen gods in a poem which he called "On the Death of Smet-Smet, the
Hippopotomus-Goddess" in lines that fairly sparkle with the electricity
of destruction and sarcasm:
"She was wrinkled and huge and hideous? She was our Mother.
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