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The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke

by Rupert Brooke

Pages
about 92
Category
Literature & Fiction
Language
English
Reading time
1.7 h at 250 wpm
Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 56 min at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

[A new Appendix is included in this etext, consisting of poems ABOUT or TO Rupert Brooke.]

The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke with an introduction by George Edward Woodberry and a biographical note by Margaret Lavington

Born at Rugby, August 3, 1887 Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, 1913 Sub-Lieutenant, R.N.V.R., September, 1914 Antwerp Expedition, October, 1914 Sailed with British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, February 28, 1915 Died in the Aegean, April 23, 1915

Rupert Brooke was both fair to see and winning in his ways. There was at the first contact both bloom and charm; and most of all there was life. To use the word his friends describe him by, he was "vivid". This vitality, though manifold in expression, is felt primarily in his sensations -- surprise mingled with delight --

This is life's "first fine rapture". It makes him patient to name over those myriad things (each of which seems like a fresh discovery) curious but potent, and above all common, that he "loved", -- he the "Great Lover". Lover of what, then? Why, of

and the like, through thirty lines of exquisite words; and he is captivated by the multiple brevity of these vignettes of sense, keen, momentary, ecstatic with the morning dip of youth in the wonderful stream. The poem is a catalogue of vital sensations and "dear names" as well. "All these have been my loves."

The spring of these emotions is the natural body, but it sends pulsations far into the spirit. The feeling rises in direct observation, but it is soon aware of the "outlets of the sky". He sees objects practically unrelated, and links them in strings; or he sees them pictorially; or, he sees pictures immersed as it were in an atmosphere of thought. When the process is complete, the thought suggests the picture and is its origin.

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