"
The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke.
Or again, from "Ambarvalia":
"But laughing and half-way up to heaven,
With wind and hill and star,
I yet shall keep before I sleep,
Your Ambarvalia."
The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke.
Immortality, which goes hand in hand with the God of immortality, the
God of the "Everlasting Arms," is voiced in "Dining-Room Tea," a poem
addressed to one whom he loved:
"For suddenly, and other whence,
I looked on your magnificence.
I saw the stillness and the light,
And you, august, immortal, white,
Holy and strange; and every glint,
Posture and jest and thought and tint
Freed from the mask of transiency,
Triumphant in eternity,
Immote, immortal."
The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke.
Then, speaking of the war and peace with great yearning and great
faith, the young poet cried a new glory in what he calls "God's
Hour" in a poem on "Peace":
"Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour,
And caught our youth and wakened us from sleeping,
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping."
The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke.
And who has not felt this, but has not been able to thus express it?
And who has not seen that somehow, strangely, mysteriously, wondrously,
the youth not only of England, but of America has leaped to "God's
Hour," as Brooke calls this war; leaped from play, and from
listlessness in spiritual things; leaped from indifference to things of
the eternities; leaped to a magnificent heroism, selflessness,
sacrifice, brotherhood; leaped to a new and Godlike nobility.
Pages:
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98