Rupert Brooke was both fair to see and winning in his ways. There was at the first contact both bloom and charm; and most of all there was life. To use the word his friends describe him by, he was "vivid". This vitality, though manifold in expression, is felt primarily in his sensations - surprise mingled with delight - "One after one, like tasting a sweet food." This is life's "first fine rapture". It makes him patient to name over those myriad things each of which seems like a fresh discovery curious but potent, and above ...
Read More
Rupert Brooke was both fair to see and winning in his ways. There was at the first contact both bloom and charm; and most of all there was life. To use the word his friends describe him by, he was "vivid". This vitality, though manifold in expression, is felt primarily in his sensations - surprise mingled with delight - "One after one, like tasting a sweet food." This is life's "first fine rapture". It makes him patient to name over those myriad things each of which seems like a fresh discovery curious but potent, and above all common, that he "loved", - he the "Great Lover". Lover of what, then? Why, of "White plates and cups clean-gleaming, Ringed with blue lines," - and the like, through thirty lines of exquisite words; and he is captivated by the multiple brevity of these vignettes of sense, keen, momentary, ecstatic with the morning dip of youth in the wonderful stream. The poem is a catalogue of vital sensations and "dear names" as well. "All these have been my loves."
Read Less
Add this copy of The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke to cart. $21.88, new condition, Sold by Ingram Customer Returns Center rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from NV, USA, published 2024 by Culturea.
Rupert Brooke, taken young in WW1 by a mosquito bite gone septic, buried in Greece, captivates none the less nearly a century later. A bit of biographical background, particularly his letters to Noel Olivier and hers in return, plus his Letters From America (which expands to RL Stevenson's South Pacific), will make more sense of the mood and man behind the verse. Verse that is much more than "war" poetry. A celebration of life and nature, swimming in the moonlight, living in a garden south of Cambridge, which to this day serves tea and has a small memorial of a museum to Brooke and the Grantchester Group, of which he was the heart and soul. A book for all Anglophiles and those to whom quality of life is about living joyfully, preferably in a garden... Two of the poems are a trout's eye view of the world: lovely, brings a smile to consider the universe from the trout stream and swimming spot beloved of Byron and Brooke.
