RUPERT BROOKE (1887-1915)

Born: 3rd August 1887 in Rugby, Britain

Died: 23rd August 1915 in Skyros, Greece

- Ruper Chawner Brooke was born in an academic family, and was educated at Rugby School (where
his father was a housemaster) and King's College, Cambridge (where he was known for his striking
good looks, charm and intellect; he became friend with many of those from the „Bloomsbury Group“,
and moved in elite circles). He also became president of the University Fabian Society (a British
intellectual socialist movement who advocate gradual reforms within the law leading to democratic
socialism).

- Claiming a desire for solitude he moved a few miles out of Cambridge to Grantchester, lodging first
in the Orchard Tea Rooms and later in the Old Vicarage. In Grantchester, his days were lived with
friends out in the open air: going barefoot, sleeping out, walking, camping.

- On a holiday 1910, he became secretly engaged to a girl six years his junior, Noel Olivier.

- Rupert spent spring 1911 in Munich, learning German. When he returned to Grantchester in May
1911, he began to work on his thesis. At the same time he completed his first volume of poetry, Poems
1911, compraising poems devoted to his ideal of English country life.

- Then came a crisis which marked a turning point in his life. Over the course of 1911, despite his
engagement to Noel, Rupert had fallen steadily in love with Ka Cox (Katharine Laird Cox), a fellow
Fabian committee member. Brooke suffered from a severe emotional crisis, caused by sexual
confusion and jelaousy, resulting in the breakdown of his relationship with Ka Cox. Brooke suffered
sth. which has been described as a mental breakdown causing him to travel restlessly through England
and Germany in spring 1912.

- It was only in September 1912 that Rupert's life began to regain a sense of order. In the place of his
former Bloomsbury friends came the patronage of Edward Marsh. He introduced Rupert to a whole
new world of eminent and famous people: Churchill himself, Violet Asquith, G. K. Chesterton, Henry
James, John Masefield, William Butler Yeats, Bernard Shaw, James Barrie, and many others.

- In 1913, Rupert was finally awarded a Fellowship at King's College. His dissertation was on the
seventeenth century English playwright, John Webster. In it, he demonstrated not just his academic
excellence, but also the potential to become a leading literary and drama critic.

- But instead of taking up his Fellowship immediately, he travelled, first to New York, Canada, San
Francisco, the Pacific and New Zealand, before settling on Tahiti. It was only the exhaustion of his
funds, together with a nasty inflammation from coral poisoning, which took him back to England.

- And now, again, he delayed taking up his Fellowship at King's. Shortly after war was declared on 3rd
August, Brooke remarked to a friend he met in the street: "Well, if Armageddon is on, I suppose one
should be there". This light comment belied the fact that war gave his idealism a new focus.

- In September 1914, he was commission into The Royal Naval Division and took part in the
disastrous Antwerp expedition in October 1914. The British forces were soon overrun, and this was
Brook's only experience in combat. He returned to Britain awaiting redeployment and wrote five
poems which were to establish him among the cannon of the WWI writers – the „war sonnets“ –
Peace, Safety, The Dead, second The Dead, The Soldier.

- In February 1915, he set sail for the Dardanells, although problems with enemy mines led to a
change of destination and dalay in deployment. By April 10th the shipwas on the move again,
anchoring off the island of Skyros on April 17th. Still suffering from his earlier ill-helath, Rupert now
developed a blood poisoning from an insect bite, placing his body under fatal strain.

- He died on 23rd April 1915 and was buried in an olive grove (maslinik)on the island. Brooke's
poetry caught optimism of the opening months of the war in his poems. His collection of later work
1914, and Other Poems was published in June 1915. His idealism about war contrasts strongly with
poetry published later in the conflict.

The Old Vicarage, Grantchester

(Cafe des Westens, Berlin, May 1912)

2. Here am I, sweating, sick, and hot,

1. Just now the lilac is in bloom,
All before my little room;
And in my flower-beds, I think,
Smile the carnation and the pink;
And down the borders, well I know,
The poppy and the pansy blow . . .
Oh! there the chestnuts, summer
through,
Beside the river make for you
A tunnel of green gloom, and sleep
Deeply above; and green and deep
The stream mysterious glides beneath,
Green as a dream and deep as death.
— Oh, damn! I know it! and I know
How the May fields all golden show,
And when the day is young and sweet,
Gild gloriously the bare feet
That run to bathe . . .
'Du lieber Gott!'
And there the shadowed waters fresh
Lean up to embrace the naked flesh.
Temperamentvoll German Jews
Drink beer around; — and THERE the dews
Are soft beneath a morn of gold.
Here tulips bloom as they are told;
Unkempt about those hedges blows
An English unofficial rose;
And there the unregulated sun
Slopes down to rest when day is done,
And wakes a vague unpunctual star,
A slippered Hesper; and there are
Meads towards Haslingfield and Coton
Where das Betreten's not verboten.

3. ειθε γενοιμην . . . would I were
In Grantchester, in Grantchester!
— Where men with Splendid Hearts may go;
Some, it may be, can get in touch
With Nature there, or Earth, or
such.
And clever modern men have seen
A Faun a-peeping through the
green,
And felt the Classics were not
dead,
To glimpse a Naiad's reedy head,
Or hear the Goat-foot piping
low: . . .
But these are things I do not
know.
I only know that you may lie
Day long and watch the
Cambridge sky,
And, flower-lulled in sleepy grass,
Hear the cool lapse of hours pass,
Until the centuries blend and blur
In Grantchester, in
Grantchester. . . .
Still in the dawnlit waters cool
His ghostly Lordship swims his
pool,
And tries the strokes, essays the
tricks,
Long learnt on Hellespont, or
Styx.
Dan Chaucer hears his river still
Chatter beneath a phantom mill.
Tennyson notes, with studious
eye,
How Cambridge waters hurry by .
..
And in that garden, black and
white,
Creep whispers through the grass
all night;
And spectral dance, before the
dawn,
A hundred Vicars down the lawn;
Curates, long dust, will come and
go
On lissom, clerical, printless toe;
And oft between the boughs is
seen
The sly shade of a Rural Dean . . .
Till, at a shiver in the skies,
Vanishing with Satanic cries,
The prim ecclesiastic rout
Leaves but a startled sleeper-out,
Grey heavens, the first bird's
drowsy calls,
The falling house that never falls.
4. God! I will pack, and take a train, 5. Ah God! to see the branches stir
And get me to England once again! Across the moon at Grantchester!
For England's the one land, I know, To smell the thrilling-sweet and rotten
Unforgettable, unforgotten
And Cambridgeshire, of all England, River-smell, and hear the breeze
The shire for Men who Understand; Sobbing in the little trees.
And of THAT district I prefer Say, do the elm-clumps greatly stand
The lovely hamlet Grantchester. Still guardians of that holy land?
For Cambridge people rarely smile, The chestnuts shade, in reverend dream,
Being urban, squat, and packed with The yet unacademic stream?
guile; Is dawn a secret shy and cold
And Royston men in the far South Anadyomene, silver-gold?
Are black and fierce and strange of And sunset still a golden sea
mouth; From Haslingfield to Madingley?
At Over they fling oaths at one, And after, ere the night is born,
And worse than oaths at Trumpington, Do hares come out about the corn?
And Ditton girls are mean and dirty, Oh, is the water sweet and cool,
And there's none in Harston under thirty, Gentle and brown, above the pool?
And folks in Shelford and those parts And laughs the immortal river still
Have twisted lips and twisted hearts, Under the mill, under the mill?
And Barton men make Cockney rhymes, Say, is there Beauty yet to find?
And Coton's full of nameless crimes, And Certainty? and Quiet kind?
And things are done you'd not believe Deep meadows yet, for to forget
At Madingley on Christmas Eve. The lies, and truths, and pain? . . . oh! yet
Strong men have run for miles and miles, Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
When one from Cherry Hinton smiles; And is there honey still for tea?
Strong men have blanched, and shot their
wives,
Rather than send them to St. Ives;
Strong men have cried like babes, bydam,
To hear what happened at Babraham.
But Grantchester! ah, Grantchester!
There's peace and holy quiet there,
Great clouds along pacific skies,
And men and women with straight eyes,
Lithe children lovelier than a dream,
A bosky wood, a slumbrous stream,
And little kindly winds that creep
Round twilight corners, half asleep.
In Grantchester their skins are white;
They bathe by day, they bathe by night;
The women there do all they ought;
The men observe the Rules of Thought.
They love the Good; they worship Truth;
They laugh uproariously in youth;
(And when they get to feeling old,
They up and shoot themselves, I'm
told) . . .
A typical Georgian poem, with a pastoral frame. But this is not the pastoralism that we find with
Elizabethans (the creation of a vivid, ideal way of living, the heightening of elements of contemporary
life). It is rather poetry that deliberately turns away from contemporary situations and uses the
daydream of unspoiled English country as an anodyne. It is a kind of fantasy of an middle upper class
that refuse to face the modern crisis at the moment that threatens to disrupt the whole of the European
social structure. Brooke finds himself sitting in Berlin pub surrounded by German Jews who "drink
beer around", and remembers his Grantchester and its beautiful nature, revealing in that imaginative
scene a kind of Wordsworthian beauty. In 2nd stanza he makes a comparison between England and
Germany, praising English freedom through images of: unofficial sun, unregulated sun, unpunctual
star. He is celebrating England where "das Betreten's not verboten". It is clear that he used German
here because, in his opinion, in England you will not hear such phrase. Then, the poet wants us to pay
attention to the actual nature around us, because he says that he doesn't know anything about legends,
myths and supernatural beings, but "to watch the Cambridge sky" is as beautiful as anything else in the
world. When you are in Grantchester "the centuries blend and blur", and that refers to the motive of
timelessness - the supreme quality of unspoiled nature. Being in Grantchester you can see the classics
of literature revived - by daylight you can encounter Tenyson, Chaucer and Lordship (Lord Bayron),
and by night you can see ghosts of vicars, Curates, the sly shade of Rural dean, until the night vanishes
with "satanic cries". Remembering these "possibilities" Brooke swears to God that he will
immediately come back to England because it is the only land for him. England as a whole is the one
land "where men with splendid Hearts may go". If we take into consideration this famous verse
together with the remainder of the stanza, in which he describes English people (...Cambridge people
rarely smile...and Ditton girls are mean and dirty...and Barton men make Cockney rhyme..), we see
that these lines that follow demonstrate that it is only meant as joke. but Grantchester in particular is
sth. different, because "there's peace and holy quiet there", people are religious, devouted to God, they
worship the truth, but at the same time, Brooke ironically suggests that they praise life only when they
are young. Poet's inner peace can only be established with physical or metaphysical presence in
Grantchester as it was and as it is. That's why the end of the poem is full of open questions, which
suggest author's fear that Grantchester and its nature will also undergo the changes of the modern
world. So he asks: is the water sweet and cool, is the beauty yet to be found, does the church clock
stand at ten to three (timelessness), and is there honey still for tea?
 Song ["Oh! Love," They Said, "Is King Of Kings]

1. "Oh! Love," they said, "is King of
Kings,
And Triumph is his crown.
Earth fades in flame before his wings,
And Sun and Moon bow down." --
But that, I knew, would never do;
And Heaven is all too high.
So whenever I meet a Queen, I said,
I will not catch her eye.
2. "Oh! Love," they said, and "Love,"
they said,
"The gift of Love is this;
A crown of thorns about thy head,
And vinegar to thy kiss!" --
But Tragedy is not for me;
And I'm content to be gay.
So whenever I spied a Tragic Lady,
I went another way.
3. And so I never feared to see
You wander down the street,
Or come across the fields to me
On ordinary feet.
For what they'd never told me of,
And what I never knew;
It was that all the time, my love,
Love would be merely you.

We are introduced with the image of love, presented by "them", which probably refers to other English
poets who wrote about love as a supernatural phenomenon. We clearly see the opposition between
what they had said and what the author experienced, or what he thinks the love is. He doesn't believe
in an ideal love, in its upraised state. He doesn't believe in these lofty words which we use when we
want to describe love. he says that "heaven is all too high", where heaven is an equivalent for this ideal
love: he knows that he cannot find this kind of love, or meet "a Queen", who represents it. he knows
that he will catch her eye and fall in love with her. The second stanza deals with the opposite
perception of love, where it represents suffering compared to Jesus's passion. Love is "the crown
above thy head" and "vinegar to thy kiss", both references to Jesus Christ. If we want to reach the ideal
love we have to suffer and be prepared to great sacrifices, and many of us don't have the strength.
Love is a tragedy that is not play with and one should rather be without love than suffer like Jesus. So
whenever we come across love, or "Tragic Lady", we should went another way. At the end, it happens
that all we have been told in only an illusion: love is actually a common human feeling that comes to
us "on ordinary feet" and has a human face, lives on earth - not in heaven or hell. For Brooke, love is
the thing that waits for us within our reach, but usually we fail to realize that love is merely a person
we care about.
 1914 III: The Dead
1. 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.
2. 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.

We see the imperialistic spirit of English nation, which is expressed in full allegoric and didactic
quality of Georgian poetry - the war enriches the lives of young Englishmen, it gave them holiness,
love and pain. The verse "dying has made us rarer gifts than gold" suggests that the common people
became heroes in defending their country, or rather the ideals of their country, and that immortality is
the gift given by death. The war elevated them up from their pre-war nothingness. At the very
beginning, the military bugles are invited to blow out and spread the honor of the fallen warriors. They
should be remembered because they split their blood (the sweet wine of youth), they gave up their
lives, their work and joy. Their death should remind us that we lived in our dearth, and now we have
their "Love and Pain", and most importantly, "The Holiness" which we were deprived of, and we
missed it so much. Before the heroes, there was nobody to be honored, and now "honor has come
back", because England once again has its sons who deserved to be a part of national heritage.
 1914 IV: The Dead

These hearts were woven of human joys and cares,

Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth.
The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,
And sunset, and the colours of the earth.
These had seen movement, and heard music; known
Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;
Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;
Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended.

There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter

And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after,
Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance
And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white
Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,
A width, a shining peace, under the night.
 The Soldier

2. And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

1. 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 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.
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.

This poem is kind of prophecy or rather his message for the people who will stay alive about should
they do with and how he should be remembered. Brooke actually did die in a foreign land and was
buried also, so we can say that at "some corner of a foreign field" the "richer dust" of his being is
concealed in the rich land. Wherever he is to die, it will be forever England, because he feeds this
foreign earth with the essence of England. The children whom England gave birth, raised, made aware,
they are dying in remote places and the will never again be "washed by rivers" and "blest by suns of
home". The second stanza is somehow ambiguous. It possibly suggests that the thoughts given by
England will beat in the eternal mind, and that thoughts will leave the trace wherever they reach. The
author wants his death to be thought of as something that at least could help a bit to the eventual
extinguishing of all the evil in the world, that all evil will be "shed away". Brooke wanted the last
vision in the poem to be a beautiful England and her pleasant sights and sounds and his laughter with
friends and the gentleness of the hearts that gained the eternal peace back home. Their hearts and souls
come back to England when they die on some corner of a foreign land, which was Rupert Brooke's
faith.