While known as a war poet most of Brooke's poetry was written prior to the Great War. When war was declared in 1914 he had his first experience of war on the disastrous expedition to Antwerp, spending a few days and nights being shelled in trenches. Early in 1915 he sailed with the Expeditionary Force to the Dardanelles, but died of blood poisoning on a French hospital ship at Scyros, Greece on April 23rd, Saint George's Day. He was buried at night, by torchlight, in an olive grove.

I found much of his words pompous by modern standards, generally glorifying war although he had so little experience of it, yet his voice called to mind the generation of young men who were lost. Although his most famous lines are in "The Soldier", I found this poem particularly appealing:

Song

All suddenly the wind comes soft,
And Spring is here again;
And the hawthorn quickens with buds of green,
And my heart with buds of pain.

My heart all Winter lay so numb,
The earth so dead and frore,
That I never thought the Spring would come,
Or my heart wake any more.

But Winter's broken and earth has woken,
And the small birds cry again;
And the hawthorn hedge puts forth its buds,
And my heart puts forth its pain.”

( )

The stars are more for the memoir than the poetry which is all wild-eyed and rhapshodic. The Soldier is remarkable but stands alone.

The memoir, by Marsh, is fascinating. Again, the impression one gets of Brooke is of someone who couldn't move without having a life changing, mind altering experience. But what lingers is the death, not only of Brooke, but of so many of his circle. You have a real impression of the scale of loss produced by World War One. ( )

641. The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke (read 24 Feb 1961) Brooke is a fascinating figure, and some of his poems really resonate with me. I long ago memorized the poem beginning: "If I should die, think only this of me..." ( )