Rupert Brooke War Poems

Rupert Chawner Brooke (1887 – 1915)

War Poems by Rupert Brooke

• 1914 I: Peace
• Now, God be thanked Who has watched us with His hour...
• 1914 II: Safety
• Dear! of all happy in the hour, most blest...
• 1914 III: The Dead
• Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!...
• 1914 IV: The Dead
• These hearts were woven of human joys and cares...
• 1914 V: The Soldier
• If I should die, think only this of me...
• A Channel Passage
• The damned ship lurched and slithered. Quiet and quick...
• A Letter to a Live Poet
• Sir, since the last Elizabethan died...
• A Memory (From A Sonnet- Sequence)
• Somewhile before the dawn I rose, and stept...
• And love has changed to kindliness
• When love has changed to kindliness...
• Ante Aram
• Before thy shrine I kneel, an unknown worshipper...
• Beauty and Beauty
• When Beauty and Beauty meet...
• Blue Evening
• My restless blood now lies a-quiver...
• Choriambics I
• Ah! not now, when desire burns, and the wind calls, and the suns of spring...
• Choriambics II
• Here the flame that was ash, shrine that was void...
• Clouds
• Down the blue night the unending columns press...
• Dawn
• Opposite me two Germans snore and sweat...
• Day And Night
• Through my heart's palace Thoughts unnumbered throng...
• Day That I Have Loved
• Tenderly, day that I have loved, I close your eyes...
• Dead Mens Love
• There was a damned successful Poet...
• Desertion
• So light we were, so right we were, so fair faith shone...
• Dining-Room Tea
• When you were there, and you, and you...
• Doubts
• When she sleeps, her soul, I know...
• Dust
• When the white flame in us is gone...
• Failure
• Because God put His adamantine fate...
• Finding
• From the candles and dumb shadows...
• Flight
• Voices out of the shade that cried...
• Fragment
• I strayed about the deck, an hour, to-night...
• Fragment on Painters
• There is an evil which that Race attaints...
• Hauntings
• In the grey tumult of these after years...
• He Wonders Whether To Praise Or To Blame Her
• I have peace to weigh your worth, now all is over...
• Heaven
• Fish (fly-replete, in depth of June...
• Home
• I came back late and tired last night...
• In Examination
• Lo! from quiet skies...
• Jealousy
• When I see you, who were so wise and cool...
• Kindliness
• When love has changed to kindliness...
• Libido
• How should I know? The enormous wheels of will...
• Lines Written In The Belief That The Ancient Roman Festival Of The Dead Was Called Ambarvalia
• Swings the way still by hollow and hill...
• Love
• Love is a breach in the walls, a broken gate...
• Mary and Gabriel
• Young Mary, loitering once her garden way...
• Menelaus and Helen
• Hot through Troy's ruin Menelaus broke...
• Mummia
• As those of old drank mummia...
• Mutability
• They say there's a high windless world and strange...
• Now, God Be Thanked Who Has Matched Us With His Hour
• Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour...
• On The Death Of Smet-Smet, The Hippopotamus- Goddess
• Song of a tribe of the ancient Egyptians...
• Paralysis
• For moveless limbs no pity I crave...
• Pine-Trees and the Sky: Evening
• I'd watched the sorrow of the evening sky...
• Retrospect
• In your arms was still delight...
• Seaside
• Swiftly out from the friendly lilt of the band...
• Second Best
• Here in the dark, O heart...
• Sleeping Out: Full Moon
• They sleep within...
• Sometimes Even Now . . .
• Sometimes even now I may...
• Song
• Oh! Love, they said, is King of Kings...
• Sonnet Reversed
• Hand trembling towards hand; the amazing lights...
• Sonnet: I said I splendidly loved you; its not true
• I said I splendidly loved you; it's not true...
• Sonnet: in Time of Revolt
• The Thing must End. I am no boy! I am...
• Sonnet: Oh! Death will find me, long before I tire
• Oh! Death will find me, long before I tire...
• Success
• I think if you had loved me when I wanted...
• The Beginning
• Some day I shall rise and leave my friends...
• The Busy Heart
• Now that we've done our best and worst, and parted...
• The Call
• Out of the nothingness of sleep...
• The Charm
• In darkness the loud sea makes moan...
• The Chilterns
• Your hands, my dear, adorable...
• The Fish
• In a cool curving world he lies...
• The Funeral Of Youth : Threnody
• The day that YOUTH had died...
• The Goddess In The Wood
• In a flowered dell the Lady Venus stood...
• The Great Lover
• I have been so great a lover: filled my days...
• The Hill
• Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill...
• The Jolly Company
• The stars, a jolly company...
• The Life Beyond
• He wakes, who never thought to wake again...
• The Little Dogs Day
• All in the town were still asleep...
• The Night Journey
• Hands and lit faces eddy to a line...
• The Old Vicarage - Grantchester
• Just now the lilac is in bloom...
• The One Before the Last
• I dreamt I was in love again...
• The Song of the Beasts
• Come away! Come away!...
• The Song of the Pilgrims
• What light of unremembered skies...
• The Treasure
• When colour goes home into the eyes...
• The Vision of the Archangels
• Slowly up silent peaks, the white edge of the world...
• The Voice
• Safe in the magic of my woods...
• The Wayfarers
• Is it the hour? We leave this resting-place...
• Theres Wisdom In Women
• Oh love is fair, and love is rare; my dear one she said...
• Thoughts On The Shape Of The Human Body
• How can we find? how can we rest? how can...
• Tiare Tahiti
• Mamua, when our laughter ends...
• Today I have been happy. All the day
• I held the memory of you, and wove...
• Town and Country
• Here, where love's stuff is body, arm and side...
• Unfortunate
• Heart, you are restless as a paper scrap...
• Victory
• All night the ways of Heaven were desolate...
• Wagner
• Creeps in half wanton, half asleep...
• Waikiki
• Warm perfumes like a breath from vine and tree...

Rupert Chawner Brooke was a British war poet, somewhat idealistic and known for his looks. W.B. Years once described him as “the handsomest young man in England.”

Born in Rugby, Warwickshire, he attended Rugby School where his father was a schoolmaster. He later attended King’s College, Cambridge, where he became one of the ‘Cambridge Apostles’, and made friends with members of the Bloomsbury group.

Brooke struggled somewhat with his sexuality, which often led to a frustrated and unhappy romantic life.

During the First World War, Rupert Brooke was commissioned into the Navy, just after his twenty-seventh birthday, and took part in the Royal Navy Division’s Antwerp expedition. He died on April 23rd, 1915 off the island of Lemnos, in the Argean, on his way to battle at Gallipoli after contracting pneumonia from an infected mosquito bite. His body is buried on the island of Skyros, Freece.