[ { "title": "1914 V: The Soldier", "author": "Rupert Brooke", "lines": [ "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.", "", "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." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "I. Peace", "author": "Rupert Brooke", "lines": [ "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 honour could not move,", "And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,", "And all the little emptiness of love!", "", "Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,", "Where there's no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,", "Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;", "Nothing to shake the laughing heart's long peace there", "But only agony, and that has ending;", "And the worst friend and enemy is but Death." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "A Letter to a Live Poet", "author": "Rupert Brooke", "lines": [ "Sir, since the last Elizabethan died,", "Or, rather, that more Paradisal muse,", "Blind with much light, passed to the light more glorious", "Or deeper blindness, no man's hand, as thine,", "Has, on the world's most noblest chord of song,", "Struck certain magic strains. Ears satiate", "With the clamorous, timorous whisperings of to-day,", "Thrilled to perceive once more the spacious voice", "And serene unterrance of old. We heard", "-- With rapturous breath half-held, as a dreamer dreams", "Who dares not know it dreaming, lest he wake --", "The odorous, amorous style of poetry,", "The melancholy knocking of those lines,", "The long, low soughing of pentameters,", "-- Or the sharp of rhyme as a bird's cry --", "And the innumerable truant polysyllables", "Multitudinously twittering like a bee.", "Fulfilled our hearts were with the music then,", "And all the evenings sighed it to the dawn,", "And all the lovers heard it from all the trees.", "All of the accents upon the all the norms!", "-- And ah! the stress of the penultimate!", "We never knew blank verse could have such feet.", "", "Where is it now? Oh, more than ever, now", "I sometimes think no poetry is read", "Save where some sepultured Cѕsura bled,", "Royally incarnadining all the line.", "Is the imperial iamb laid to rest,", "And the young trochee, having done enough?", "Ah! turn again! Sing so to us, who are sick", "Of seeming-simple rhymes, bizarre emotions,", "Decked in the simple verses of the day,", "Infinite meaning in a little gloom,", "Irregular thoughts in stanzas regular,", "Modern despair in antique metres, myths", "Incomprehensible at evening,", "And symbols that mean nothing in the dawn.", "The slow lines swell. The new style sighs. The Celt", "Moans round with many voices.", "God! to see", "Gaunt anapѕsts stand up out of the verse,", "Combative accents, stress where no stress should be,", "Spondee on spondee, iamb on choriamb,", "The thrill of all the tribrachs in the world,", "And all the vowels rising to the E!", "To hear the blessed mutter of those verbs,", "Conjunctions passionate toward each other's arms,", "And epithets like amaranthine lovers", "Stretching luxuriously to the stars,", "All prouder pronouns than the dawn, and all", "The thunder of the trumpets of the noun!" ], "linecount": "51" }, { "title": "There's Wisdom In Women", "author": "Rupert Brooke", "lines": [ "\"Oh love is fair, and love is rare;\" my dear one she said,", "\"But love goes lightly over.\" I bowed her foolish head,", "And kissed her hair and laughed at her. Such a child was she;", "So new to love, so true to love, and she spoke so bitterly.", "", "But there's wisdom in women, of more than they have known,", "And thoughts go blowing through them, are wiser than their own,", "Or how should my dear one, being ignorant and young,", "Have cried on love so bitterly, with so true a tongue?" ], "linecount": "8" }, { "title": "The Night Journey", "author": "Rupert Brooke", "lines": [ "Hands and lit faces eddy to a line;", "The dazed last minutes click; the clamour dies.", "Beyond the great-swung arc o' the roof, divine,", "Night, smoky-scarv'd, with thousand coloured eyes", "", "Glares the imperious mystery of the way.", "Thirsty for dark, you feel the long-limbed train", "Throb, stretch, thrill motion, slide, pull out and sway,", "Strain for the far, pause, draw to strength again. . . .", "", "As a man, caught by some great hour, will rise,", "Slow-limbed, to meet the light or find his love;", "And, breathing long, with staring sightless eyes,", "Hands out, head back, agape and silent, move", "", "Sure as a flood, smooth as a vast wind blowing;", "And, gathering power and purpose as he goes,", "Unstumbling, unreluctant, strong, unknowing,", "Borne by a will not his, that lifts, that grows,", "", "Sweep out to darkness, triumphing in his goal,", "Out of the fire, out of the little room. . . .", "-- There is an end appointed, O my soul!", "Crimson and green the signals burn; the gloom", "", "Is hung with steam's far-blowing livid streamers.", "Lost into God, as lights in light, we fly,", "Grown one with will, end-drunken huddled dreamers.", "The white lights roar. The sounds of the world die.", "", "And lips and laughter are forgotten things.", "Speed sharpens; grows. Into the night, and on,", "The strength and splendour of our purpose swings.", "The lamps fade; and the stars. We are alone." ], "linecount": "28" }, { "title": "Sonnet: Oh! Death will find me, long before I tire", "author": "Rupert Brooke", "lines": [ "Oh! Death will find me, long before I tire", "Of watching you; and swing me suddenly", "Into the shade and loneliness and mire", "Of the last land! There, waiting patiently,", "", "One day, I think, I'll feel a cool wind blowing,", "See a slow light across the Stygian tide,", "And hear the Dead about me stir, unknowing,", "And tremble. And I shall know that you have died,", "", "And watch you, a broad-browed and smiling dream,", "Pass, light as ever, through the lightless host,", "Quietly ponder, start, and sway, and gleam --", "Most individual and bewildering ghost! --", "", "And turn, and toss your brown delightful head", "Amusedly, among the ancient Dead." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "Sonnet: I said I splendidly loved you; it's not true", "author": "Rupert Brooke", "lines": [ "I said I splendidly loved you; it's not true.", "Such long swift tides stir not a land-locked sea.", "On gods or fools the high risk falls -- on you --", "The clean clear bitter-sweet that's not for me.", "Love soars from earth to ecstasies unwist.", "Love is flung Lucifer-like from Heaven to Hell.", "But -- there are wanderers in the middle mist,", "Who cry for shadows, clutch, and cannot tell", "Whether they love at all, or, loving, whom:", "An old song's lady, a fool in fancy dress,", "Or phantoms, or their own face on the gloom;", "For love of Love, or from heart's loneliness.", "Pleasure's not theirs, nor pain. They doubt, and sigh,", "And do not love at all. Of these am I." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "Sonnet", "author": "Rupert Brooke", "lines": [ "Not with vain tears, when we’re beyond the sun,", "We’ll beat on the substantial doors, nor tread", "Those dusty high-roads of the aimless dead", "Plaintive for Earth; but rather turn and run", "Down some close-covered by-way of the air,", "Some low sweet alley between wind and wind,", "Stoop under faint gleams, thread the shadows, find", "Some whispering ghost-forgotten nook, and there", "", "Spend in pure converse our eternal day;", "Think each in each, immediately wise;", "Learn all we lacked before; hear, know, and say", "What this tumultuous body now denies;", "And feel, who have laid our groping hands away;", "And see, no longer blinded by our eyes." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "V. The Soldier", "author": "Rupert Brooke", "lines": [ "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.", "", "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." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "Sleeping Out: Full Moon", "author": "Rupert Brooke", "lines": [ "They sleep within. . . .", "I cower to the earth, I waking, I only.", "High and cold thou dreamest, O queen, high-dreaming and lonely.", "", "We have slept too long, who can hardly win", "The white one flame, and the night-long crying;", "The viewless passers; the world's low sighing", "With desire, with yearning,", "To the fire unburning,", "To the heatless fire, to the flameless ecstasy! . . .", "", "Helpless I lie.", "And around me the feet of thy watchers tread.", "There is a rumour and a radiance of wings above my head,", "An intolerable radiance of wings. . . .", "", "All the earth grows fire,", "White lips of desire", "Brushing cool on the forehead, croon slumbrous things.", "Earth fades; and the air is thrilled with ways,", "Dewy paths full of comfort. And radiant bands,", "The gracious presence of friendly hands,", "Help the blind one, the glad one, who stumbles and strays,", "Stretching wavering hands, up, up, through the praise", "Of a myriad silver trumpets, through cries,", "To all glory, to all gladness, to the infinite height,", "To the gracious, the unmoving, the mother eyes,", "And the laughter, and the lips, of light." ], "linecount": "25" }, { "title": "Heaven", "author": "Rupert Brooke", "lines": [ "Fish (fly-replete, in depth of June,", "Dawdling away their wat'ry noon)", "Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear,", "Each secret fishy hope or fear.", "Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond;", "But is there anything Beyond?", "This life cannot be All, they swear,", "For how unpleasant, if it were!", "One may not doubt that, somehow, Good", "Shall come of Water and of Mud;", "And, sure, the reverent eye must see", "A Purpose in Liquidity.", "We darkly know, by Faith we cry,", "The future is not Wholly Dry.", "Mud unto mud!—Death eddies near—", "Not here the appointed End, not here!", "But somewhere, beyond Space and Time,", "Is wetter water, slimier slime!", "And there (they trust) there swimmeth One", "Who swam ere rivers were begun,", "Immense, of fishy form and mind,", "Squamous, omnipotent, and kind;", "And under that Almighty Fin,", "The littlest fish may enter in.", "Oh! never fly conceals a hook,", "Fish say, in the Eternal Brook,", "But more than mundane weeds are there,", "And mud, celestially fair;", "Fat caterpillars drift around,", "And Paradisal grubs are found;", "Unfading moths, immortal flies,", "And the worm that never dies.", "And in that heaven of all their wish,", "There shall be no more land, say fish." ], "linecount": "34" }, { "title": "The Little Dog's Day", "author": "Rupert Brooke", "lines": [ "All in the town were still asleep,", "When the sun came up with a shout and a leap.", "In the lonely streets unseen by man,", "A little dog danced. And the day began.", "", "All his life he'd been good, as far as he could,", "And the poor little beast had done all that he should.", "But this morning he swore, by Odin and Thor", "And the Canine Valhalla—he'd stand it no more!", "", "So his prayer he got granted—to do just what he wanted,", "Prevented by none, for the space of one day.", "\"Jam incipiebo, sedere facebo,\"", "In dog-Latin he quoth, \"Euge! sophos! hurray!\"", "", "He fought with the he-dogs, and winked at the she-dogs,", "A thing that had never been heard of before.", "\"For the stigma of gluttony, I care not a button!\" he", "Cried, and ate all he could swallow—and more.", "", "He took sinewy lumps from the shins of old frumps,", "And mangled the errand-boys—when he could get 'em.", "He shammed furious rabies, and bit all the babies,", "And followed the cats up the trees, and then ate 'em!\"", "", "They thought 'twas the devil was holding a revel,", "And sent for the parson to drive him away;", "For the town never knew such a hullabaloo", "As that little dog raised—till the end of that day.", "", "When the blood-red sun had gone burning down,", "And the lights were lit in the little town,", "Outside, in the gloom of the twilight grey,", "The little dog died when he'd had his day." ], "linecount": "28" }, { "title": "Home", "author": "Rupert Brooke", "lines": [ "I came back late and tired last night", "Into my little room,", "To the long chair and the firelight", "And comfortable gloom.", "", "But as I entered softly in", "I saw a woman there,", "The line of neck and cheek and chin,", "The darkness of her hair,", "The form of one I did not know", "Sitting in my chair.", "", "I stood a moment fierce and still,", "Watching her neck and hair.", "I made a step to her; and saw", "That there was no one there.", "", "It was some trick of the firelight", "That made me see her there.", "It was a chance of shade and light", "And the cushion in the chair.", "", "Oh, all you happy over the earth,", "That night, how could I sleep?", "I lay and watched the lonely gloom;", "And watched the moonlight creep", "From wall to basin, round the room,", "All night I could not sleep." ], "linecount": "24" }, { "title": "The Soldier", "author": "Rupert Brooke", "lines": [ "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.", "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." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "The Vision of the Archangels", "author": "Rupert Brooke", "lines": [ "Slowly up silent peaks, the white edge of the world,", "Trod four archangels, clear against the unheeding sky,", "Bearing, with quiet even steps, and great wings furled,", "A little dingy coffin; where a child must lie,", "It was so tiny. (Yet, you had fancied, God could never", "Have bidden a child turn from the spring and the sunlight,", "And shut him in that lonely shell, to drop for ever", "Into the emptiness and silence, into the night.…)", "", "They then from the sheer summit cast, and watched it fall,", "Through unknown glooms, that frail black coffin—and therein", "God’s little pitiful Body lying, worn and thin,", "And curled up like some crumpled, lonely flower petal—", "Till it was no more visible; then turned again", "With sorrowful quiet faces downward to the plain." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "Success", "author": "Rupert Brooke", "lines": [ "I think if you had loved me when I wanted;", "If I'd looked up one day, and seen your eyes,", "And found my wild sick blasphemous prayer granted,", "And your brown face, that's full of pity and wise,", "Flushed suddenly; the white godhead in new fear", "Intolerably so struggling, and so shamed;", "Most holy and far, if you'd come all too near,", "If earth had seen Earth's lordliest wild limbs tamed,", "Shaken, and trapped, and shivering, for MY touch --", "Myself should I have slain? or that foul you?", "But this the strange gods, who had given so much,", "To have seen and known you, this they might not do.", "One last shame's spared me, one black word's unspoken;", "And I'm alone; and you have not awoken." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "Sonnet Reversed", "author": "Rupert Brooke", "lines": [ "Hand trembling towards hand; the amazing lights", "Of heart and eye. They stood on supreme heights.", "", "Ah, the delirious weeks of honeymoon!", "Soon they returned, and, after strange adventures,", "Settled at Balham by the end of June.", "Their money was in Can. Pacs. B. Debentures,", "And in Antofagastas. Still he went", "Cityward daily; still she did abide", "At home. And both were really quite content", "With work and social pleasures. Then they died.", "They left three children (besides George, who drank):", "The eldest Jane, who married Mr Bell,", "William, the head-clerk in the County Bank,", "And Henry, a stock-broker, doing well." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "1914 I: Peace", "author": "Rupert Brooke", "lines": [ "Now, God be thanked Who has watched 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 honour could not move,", "And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,", "And all the little emptiness of love!", "", "Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,", "Where there's no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,", "Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;", "Nothing to shake the laughing heart's long peace there", "But only agony, and that has ending;", "And the worst friend and enemy is but Death." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "A Memory", "author": "Rupert Brooke", "lines": [ "(From a sonnet-sequence)", "", "", "Somewhile before the dawn I rose, and stept", "Softly along the dim way to your room,", "And found you sleeping in the quiet gloom,", "And holiness about you as you slept.", "I knelt there; till your waking fingers crept", "About my head, and held it. I had rest", "Unhoped this side of Heaven, beneath your breast.", "I knelt a long time, still; nor even wept.", "", "It was great wrong you did me; and for gain", "Of that poor moment’s kindliness, and ease,", "And sleepy mother-comfort!", "Child, you know", "How easily love leaps out to dreams like these,", "Who has seen them true. And love that’s wakened so", "Takes all too long to lay asleep again." ], "linecount": "16" }, { "title": "The Funeral of Youth: Threnody", "author": "Rupert Brooke", "lines": [ "The Day that Youth had died,", "There came to his grave-side,", "In decent mourning, from the country’s ends,", "Those scatter’d friends", "Who had lived the boon companions of his prime,", "And laughed with him and sung with him and wasted,", "In feast and wine and many-crown’d carouse,", "The days and nights and dawnings of the time", "When Youth kept open house,", "Nor left untasted", "Aught of his high emprise and ventures dear,", "No quest of his unshar’d—", "All these, with loitering feet and sad head bar’d,", "Followed their old friend’s bier.", "Folly went first,", "With muffled bells and coxcomb still revers’d;", "And after trod the bearers, hat in hand—", "Laughter, most hoarse, and Captain Pride with tanned", "And martial face all grim, and fussy Joy", "Who had to catch a train, and Lust, poor, snivelling boy;", "These bore the dear departed.", "Behind them, broken-hearted,", "Came Grief, so noisy a widow, that all said,", "“Had he but wed", "Her elder sister Sorrow, in her stead!”", "And by her, trying to soothe her all the time,", "The fatherless children, Colour, Tune, and Rhyme", "(The sweet lad Rhyme), ran all-uncomprehending.", "Then, at the way’s sad ending,", "Round the raw grave they stay’d. Old Wisdom read,", "In mumbling tone, the Service for the Dead.", "There stood Romance,", "The furrowing tears had mark’d her rougиd cheek;", "Poor old Conceit, his wonder unassuaged;", "Dead Innocency’s daughter, Ignorance;", "And shabby, ill-dress’d Generosity;", "And Argument, too full of woe to speak;", "Passion, grown portly, something middle-aged;", "And Friendship—not a minute older, she;", "Impatience, ever taking out his watch;", "Faith, who was deaf, and had to lean, to catch", "Old Wisdom’s endless drone.", "Beauty was there,", "Pale in her black; dry-eyed; she stood alone.", "Poor maz’d Imagination; Fancy wild;", "Ardour, the sunlight on his greying hair;", "Contentment, who had known Youth as a child", "And never seen him since. And Spring came too,", "Dancing over the tombs, and brought him flowers—", "She did not stay for long.", "And Truth, and Grace, and all the merry crew,", "The laughing Winds and Rivers, and lithe Hours;", "And Hope, the dewy-eyed; and sorrowing Song;—", "Yes, with much woe and mourning general,", "At dead Youth’s funeral,", "Even these were met once more together, all,", "Who erst the fair and living Youth did know;", "All, except only Love. Love had died long ago." ], "linecount": "58" }, { "title": "Vision Of The Archangels, The", "author": "Rupert Brooke", "lines": [ "Slowly up silent peaks, the white edge of the world,", "Trod four archangels, clear against the unheeding sky,", "Bearing, with quiet even steps, and great wings furled,", "A little dingy coffin; where a child must lie,", "It was so tiny. (Yet, you had fancied, God could never", "Have bidden a child turn from the spring and the sunlight,", "And shut him in that lonely shell, to drop for ever", "Into the emptiness and silence, into the night. . . .)", "", "They then from the sheer summit cast, and watched it fall,", "Through unknown glooms, that frail black coffin -- and therein", "God's little pitiful Body lying, worn and thin,", "And curled up like some crumpled, lonely flower-petal --", "Till it was no more visible; then turned again", "With sorrowful quiet faces downward to the plain." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "The Life Beyond", "author": "Rupert Brooke", "lines": [ "He wakes, who never thought to wake again,", "Who held the end was Death. He opens eyes", "Slowly, to one long livid oozing plain", "Closed down by the strange eyeless heavens. He lies;", "And waits; and once in timeless sick surmise", "Through the dead air heaves up an unknown hand,", "Like a dry branch. No life is in that land,", "Himself not lives, but is a thing that cries;", "An unmeaning point upon the mud; a speck", "Of moveless horror; an Immortal One", "Cleansed of the world, sentient and dead; a fly", "Fast-stuck in grey sweat on a corpse's neck.", "", "I thought when love for you died, I should die.", "It's dead. Alone, most strangely, I live on." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "Beauty and Beauty", "author": "Rupert Brooke", "lines": [ "When Beauty and Beauty meet", "All naked, fair to fair,", "The earth is crying-sweet,", "And scattering-bright the air,", "Eddying, dizzying, closing round,", "With soft and drunken laughter;", "Veiling all that may befall", "After -- after --", "", "Where Beauty and Beauty met,", "Earth's still a-tremble there,", "And winds are scented yet,", "And memory-soft the air,", "Bosoming, folding glints of light,", "And shreds of shadowy laughter;", "Not the tears that fill the years", "After -- after --" ], "linecount": "16" }, { "title": "Pine-Trees and the Sky: Evening", "author": "Rupert Brooke", "lines": [ "I'd watched the sorrow of the evening sky,", "And smelt the sea, and earth, and the warm clover,", "And heard the waves, and the seagull's mocking cry.", "", "And in them all was only the old cry,", "That song they always sing -- \"The best is over!", "You may remember now, and think, and sigh,", "O silly lover!\"", "And I was tired and sick that all was over,", "And because I,", "For all my thinking, never could recover", "One moment of the good hours that were over.", "And I was sorry and sick, and wished to die.", "", "Then from the sad west turning wearily,", "I saw the pines against the white north sky,", "Very beautiful, and still, and bending over", "Their sharp black heads against a quiet sky.", "And there was peace in them; and I", "Was happy, and forgot to play the lover,", "And laughed, and did no longer wish to die;", "Being glad of you, O pine-trees and the sky!" ], "linecount": "20" }, { "title": "Peace", "author": "Rupert Brooke", "lines": [ "Now, God be thanked Who has watched 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 honour could not move,", "And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,", "And all the little emptiness of love!", "", "Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,", "Where there's no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,", "Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;", "Nothing to shake the laughing heart's long peace there", "But only agony, and that has ending;", "And the worst friend and enemy is but Death." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "Funeral Of Youth, The: Threnody", "author": "Rupert Brooke", "lines": [ "The day that YOUTH had died,", "There came to his grave-side,", "In decent mourning, from the country's ends,", "Those scatter'd friends", "Who had lived the boon companions of his prime,", "And laughed with him and sung with him and wasted,", "In feast and wine and many-crown'd carouse,", "The days and nights and dawnings of the time", "When YOUTH kept open house,", "Nor left untasted", "Aught of his high emprise and ventures dear,", "No quest of his unshar'd --", "All these, with loitering feet and sad head bar'd,", "Followed their old friend's bier.", "FOLLY went first,", "With muffled bells and coxcomb still revers'd;", "And after trod the bearers, hat in hand --", "LAUGHTER, most hoarse, and Captain PRIDE with tanned", "And martial face all grim, and fussy JOY,", "Who had to catch a train, and LUST, poor, snivelling boy;", "These bore the dear departed.", "Behind them, broken-hearted,", "Came GRIEF, so noisy a widow, that all said,", "\"Had he but wed", "Her elder sister SORROW, in her stead!\"", "And by her, trying to soothe her all the time,", "The fatherless children, COLOUR, TUNE, and RHYME", "(The sweet lad RHYME), ran all-uncomprehending.", "Then, at the way's sad ending,", "Round the raw grave they stay'd. Old WISDOM read,", "In mumbling tone, the Service for the Dead.", "There stood ROMANCE,", "The furrowing tears had mark'd her rouged cheek;", "Poor old CONCEIT, his wonder unassuaged;", "Dead INNOCENCY's daughter, IGNORANCE;", "And shabby, ill-dress'd GENEROSITY;", "And ARGUMENT, too full of woe to speak;", "PASSION, grown portly, something middle-aged;", "And FRIENDSHIP -- not a minute older, she;", "IMPATIENCE, ever taking out his watch;", "FAITH, who was deaf, and had to lean, to catch", "Old WISDOM's endless drone.", "BEAUTY was there,", "Pale in her black; dry-eyed; she stood alone.", "Poor maz'd IMAGINATION; FANCY wild;", "ARDOUR, the sunlight on his greying hair;", "CONTENTMENT, who had known YOUTH as a child", "And never seen him since. And SPRING came too,", "Dancing over the tombs, and brought him flowers --", "She did not stay for long.", "And TRUTH, and GRACE, and all the merry crew,", "The laughing WINDS and RIVERS, and lithe HOURS;", "And HOPE, the dewy-eyed; and sorrowing SONG; --", "Yes, with much woe and mourning general,", "At dead YOUTH's funeral,", "Even these were met once more together, all,", "Who erst the fair and living YOUTH did know;", "All, except only LOVE. LOVE had died long ago." ], "linecount": "58" } ]