Posted on 04/23/2015 1:52:51 PM PDT by Borges
April is National Poetry Month. This year also marks the centennial of poet Rupert Brookes death on April 23, 1915. He was twenty-seven years old and became a symbol of Lost Youth in the Great War. In his short life, he wrote some of the most famous poems of his generation.
(Excerpt) Read more at examiner.com ...
It's been a long day for me :-( I glanced at the headline and thought, "Rupert's broke 100 years after his death? Heck, 100 years after my death I'll probably be broke too, at least in terms of earthly wealth." Then I looked again...
International day of the book! Great day to read his work.
WWI was a poets war, produced quite a few.
One of the 27 club.
Here’s a collection of one’s published in Stars and Stripes in 1921.
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101074206291;view=1up;seq=1
My Great Grandfather contributed with “The Message” on page 23.
A little weak on the scansion, but obviously heart-felt.
Or as Radar called him, “Ruptured Brooke.”
“I think I’ve been slaked!”
One of my favorite MASH episodes.
The Soldier
If I should die, think only this of me:
That theres some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
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,
Washed 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.
Rupert Brooke
Radar’s exposure to Culture was a recurring theme. “Aaaah, Bach!”
He was a civil engineer, who by the time of the war, specialized in sewer systems (the coming thing). He’d lied about his age to get in the Spanish American War, and thought the Puerto Rican campaign great adventure. WWI changed his view, having participated in the second battle of the Marne, especially on the Vesle River. After attempting to cross a small bridge under fire, the American forces in Fismette we set upon by German troops with flame throwers.
That'll change your perspective. But seriously, it's a sad piece, because, of course, we just went and did it again, before the bodies were cleared from the first round.
This is scary: I initially made the same reading mistake.
I went up to my store of books in my attic. Once again I perused my Sidgewick & Jackson copy 1950 28th reprint. I know that Brooke was taken ill in Egypt. He was on the way for the great but tragic enterprise at Gallipoli. He unwisely discharged himself from hospital to be with his men. He weakened from blood poisoning and died aboard ship en route.
Brooke was a romantic and saw himself in the mold of Spartan warriors of another armada. This was of the Greeks who went to Troy. This was to take the beautiful Helen back to the Greek king. She had absconded with a Trojan Prince.
In keeping with the poem he was buried on a small Greek Island. It is beautifully kept and friendly Greeks take a few odd pilgrims to pay homage.
Excuse the ramble. I shall once more chuckle over Brookes poems to the girls who rejected him. They liked him, but opted for an established man with a professional occupation, to compliment their life style. Brooke as an absolute romantic had no career plan, save writing and travelling.
Brooke was best known among his fellow poets. His Great War experience was a little outside the mainstream. He served in the Royal Naval Division, an infantry formation, but they were technically sailors. He was a Naval officer. He participated in the attack on Antwerp, so was far away from the Western Front, and then was enroute to Gallipoli when took ill. His poet, therefore, did not capture the particular of known by so many who fought and died in the trenches of Flanders and France.
Romantic he certainly was.
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,
Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary;
Leave the sick hearts that honor could not move
I wonder, would he still feel the same had he lived to see Gallipoli, the Somme, Verdun and Passchendaele....not to mention the Versailles treaty and the rise of Hitler.
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