Rupert Brooke Quotes

Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead! There’s none of these so lonely and poor of old, But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.
These laid the world away; poured out the red
Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene, That men call age; and those who would have been,
Their sons, they gave, their immortality.Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth, Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain,
Honour has come back, as a king, to earth, And paid his subjects with a royal wage;
And Nobleness walks in our ways again; And we have come into our heritage.

Oh! Death will find me, long before I tire
Of watching you; and swing me suddenly
Into the shade and loneliness and mire
Of the last land! There, waiting patiently,
One day, I think, I'll feel a cool wind blowing,
See a slow light across the Stygian tide,
And hear the Dead about me stir, unknowing,
And tremble. And I shall know that you have died,
And watch you, a broad-browed and smiling dream,
Pass, light as ever, through the lightless host,
Quietly ponder, start, and sway, and gleam—
Most individual and bewildering ghost!—
And turn, and toss your brown delightful head
Amusedly, among the ancient Dead.

Cities, like cats, will reveal themselves at night.

If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust conceal’d;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air. Wash’d by the rivers, blest by suns of home.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.

"And when we die,
All’s over that is ours; and life burns on
Through other lovers, other lips," said I
—"Heart of my heart, our heaven is now, is won!"
"We are earth’s best, that learnt her lesson here, Life is our cry. We have kept the faith!" we said.

Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?

And in my flower-beds, I think,
Smile the carnation and the pink.

Fish (fly-replete, in depth of June,
Dawdling away their wat'ry noon)
Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear,
Each secret fishy hope or fear.
Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond;
But is there anything Beyond?
This life cannot be All, they swear,
For how unpleasant, if it were!
One may not doubt that, somehow, Good
Shall come of Water and of Mud;
And, sure, the reverent eye must see
A Purpose in Liquidity.
We darkly know, by Faith we cry,
The future is not Wholly Dry.
Mud unto mud!—Death eddies near—
Not here the appointed End, not here!
But somewhere, beyond Space and Time,
Is wetter water, slimier slime!
And there (they trust) there swimmeth One
Who swam ere rivers were begun,
Immense, of fishy form and mind,
Squamous, omnipotent, and kind;
And under that Almighty Fin,
The littlest fish may enter in.
Oh! never fly conceals a hook,
Fish say, in the Eternal Brook,
But more than mundane weeds are there,
And mud, celestially fair;
Fat caterpillars drift around,
And Paradisal grubs are found;
Unfading moths, immortal flies,
And the worm that never dies.
And in that Heaven of all their wish,
There shall be no more land, say fish.