in
The Eumenides.
A former Apostle of the 1890s and the great-grandson of the assassinated British Prime Minister Spencer Perceval, he was extremely well connected both politically and socially and was later to introduce Brooke into the rarefied atmosphere of these circles. At breakfast, the morning after meeting Marsh, Brooke, who had just won a prize in the
Westminster Gazette
for ‘The Jolly Company’, showed an impressed Marsh his poem, ‘Day That I Have Loved’.
Day That I Have Loved
Tenderly, day that I have loved, I close your eyes,
And smooth your quiet brow, and fold your thin dead hands.
The grey veils of the half-light deepened; colour dies.
I bear you, a light burden, to the shrouded sands,
Where lies your waiting boat, by wreaths of the sea’s making
Mist-garlanded, with all grey weeds of the water crowned.
There you’ll be laid, past fear of sleep or hope of waking;
And over the unmoving sea, without a sound,
Faint hands will row you outward, out beyond our sight,
Us with stretched arms and empty eyes on the far-gleaming
And marble sand…
Beyond the shifting cold twilight,
Further than laughter goes, or tears, further than dreaming,
There’ll be no port, no dawn-lit islands! But the drear
Waste darkening, and, at length, flame ultimate on the deep.
Oh, the last fire – and you, unkissed, unfriended there!
Oh, the lone way’s red ending, and we not there to weep!
(We found you pale and quiet, and strangely crowned with flowers,
Lovely and secret as a child. You came with us,
Came happily, hand in hand with the young dancing hours,
High on the downs at dawn!). Void now and tenebrous,
The grey sands curve before me…
From the inland meadows,
Fragrant of June and clover, floats the dark, and fills
The hollow sea’s dead face with little creeping shadows,
And the white silence brims the hollow of the hills.
Close in the nest is folded every weary wing,
Hushed all the joyful voices; and we, who held you dear,
Eastward we turn and homeward, alone, remembering…
Day that I loved, day that I loved, the Night is here!
At the beginning of the Michaelmas term of 1908, a Trinity manwho had been at Cambridge two years earlier returned for another year. He was Vyvyan Holland, Oscar Wilde’s son, who had recently, at a friend’s behest, experimented with using his real surname. He found it an embarrassment, and indeed had dropped the experiment, and by the time he came up again, was using the family’s adopted name. ‘I got to know Rupert Brooke and A. C. Landsberg, and he used to hold poetry recitals in Firbank’s rooms.’
When Wilde’s close friend Robert Ross, who had done much to try to redeem Wilde’s reputation, came to Cambridge on business, Holland and his old Cambridge chum Ronald Firbank threw a supper for him, retaining the menu signed by those present, including Ross and Brooke. They drank Moët et Chandon, 1884.
During 1908, Methuen and Co. published
The Westminster Problems Book
, which included three of Brooke’s contributions to the problem page of the
Westminster Gazette.
Two of these were in verse.
A Nursery Rhyme
Up the road to Babylon,
Down the road to Rome,
The King has gone a-riding out
All the way from home.
There were all the folks singing,
And the church-bells ringing,
When the King rode out to Babylon,
Down the road to Rome.
Down the road from Babylon,
Up the road from Rome,
The King came slowly back
All the way back home.
There were all the folks weeping.
And the church-bells sleeping,
When the King rode back from Babylon,
When the King came home.
Fragment Completed
What of the voyage (the Dreamer saith)?
How shall the brave ship go?
Bounding waters to lift her keel,
Winds that follow with favouring breath –
Shall she come to her harbour so?
Up the shimmering tideway steal
To the flying flags, and the bells a-peal,
And the crowds that welcome her home from Death,
And the harbour lights aglow?
What at the end of her
The Eumenides.
A former Apostle of the 1890s and the great-grandson of the assassinated British Prime Minister Spencer Perceval, he was extremely well connected both politically and socially and was later to introduce Brooke into the rarefied atmosphere of these circles. At breakfast, the morning after meeting Marsh, Brooke, who had just won a prize in the
Westminster Gazette
for ‘The Jolly Company’, showed an impressed Marsh his poem, ‘Day That I Have Loved’.
Day That I Have Loved
Tenderly, day that I have loved, I close your eyes,
And smooth your quiet brow, and fold your thin dead hands.
The grey veils of the half-light deepened; colour dies.
I bear you, a light burden, to the shrouded sands,
Where lies your waiting boat, by wreaths of the sea’s making
Mist-garlanded, with all grey weeds of the water crowned.
There you’ll be laid, past fear of sleep or hope of waking;
And over the unmoving sea, without a sound,
Faint hands will row you outward, out beyond our sight,
Us with stretched arms and empty eyes on the far-gleaming
And marble sand…
Beyond the shifting cold twilight,
Further than laughter goes, or tears, further than dreaming,
There’ll be no port, no dawn-lit islands! But the drear
Waste darkening, and, at length, flame ultimate on the deep.
Oh, the last fire – and you, unkissed, unfriended there!
Oh, the lone way’s red ending, and we not there to weep!
(We found you pale and quiet, and strangely crowned with flowers,
Lovely and secret as a child. You came with us,
Came happily, hand in hand with the young dancing hours,
High on the downs at dawn!). Void now and tenebrous,
The grey sands curve before me…
From the inland meadows,
Fragrant of June and clover, floats the dark, and fills
The hollow sea’s dead face with little creeping shadows,
And the white silence brims the hollow of the hills.
Close in the nest is folded every weary wing,
Hushed all the joyful voices; and we, who held you dear,
Eastward we turn and homeward, alone, remembering…
Day that I loved, day that I loved, the Night is here!
At the beginning of the Michaelmas term of 1908, a Trinity manwho had been at Cambridge two years earlier returned for another year. He was Vyvyan Holland, Oscar Wilde’s son, who had recently, at a friend’s behest, experimented with using his real surname. He found it an embarrassment, and indeed had dropped the experiment, and by the time he came up again, was using the family’s adopted name. ‘I got to know Rupert Brooke and A. C. Landsberg, and he used to hold poetry recitals in Firbank’s rooms.’
When Wilde’s close friend Robert Ross, who had done much to try to redeem Wilde’s reputation, came to Cambridge on business, Holland and his old Cambridge chum Ronald Firbank threw a supper for him, retaining the menu signed by those present, including Ross and Brooke. They drank Moët et Chandon, 1884.
During 1908, Methuen and Co. published
The Westminster Problems Book
, which included three of Brooke’s contributions to the problem page of the
Westminster Gazette.
Two of these were in verse.
A Nursery Rhyme
Up the road to Babylon,
Down the road to Rome,
The King has gone a-riding out
All the way from home.
There were all the folks singing,
And the church-bells ringing,
When the King rode out to Babylon,
Down the road to Rome.
Down the road from Babylon,
Up the road from Rome,
The King came slowly back
All the way back home.
There were all the folks weeping.
And the church-bells sleeping,
When the King rode back from Babylon,
When the King came home.
Fragment Completed
What of the voyage (the Dreamer saith)?
How shall the brave ship go?
Bounding waters to lift her keel,
Winds that follow with favouring breath –
Shall she come to her harbour so?
Up the shimmering tideway steal
To the flying flags, and the bells a-peal,
And the crowds that welcome her home from Death,
And the harbour lights aglow?
What at the end of her
Similar Books
