Home Feed
Home
Search
Search
Add Review, Blurb, Quote
Add
Activity
Activity
Profile
Profile
1914 & Other Poems
1914 & Other Poems | Rupert Brooke
6 posts | 1 read | 1 to read
Amazon Indiebound Barnes and Noble WorldCat Goodreads LibraryThing
Pick icon
100%
review
Bookwomble
1914 & Other Poems | Rupert Brooke
post image
Pickpick

1947 Faber edition of Brooke's culturally significant poetry collection, containing his five-sonnet cycle of war poems published within weeks of his death on active duty in WWI. That he died from an infected mosquito bite and never saw combat was less mentioned at the time, and that he died in 1915, before the worst excesses of Industrialised War, made his elegiac poems a perfect propaganda memorialisation of the millions of Patriotic Dead. ⬇️

Bookwomble Despite his frequent recourse to English Exceptionalism, there is an undoubted emotional power to his war poems, frequently carved in marble on Cenotaphs and quoted by right-wing nationalistic demagogues, ironically so as Brooke was a member of the socialist Fabian Society for much of his short adult life.
The other poems can be nostalgically evocative, bitterly misogynistic, and overblown by turns. Reading something of his life, relationships ⬇️
6mo
Bookwomble ... and attitudes didn't greatly endear him to me but, at the same time, I feel a compassion for a young man raised in a stultifying atmosphere of late Victorian sexual repression and harshly proscribed class expectations.
Another of those lives lost to War about whose unrealised future contribution to culture we can only mournfully speculate.
⬇️
6mo
Bookwomble Of the articles I read about Brooke, I found this one from The New Yorker most interesting: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-true-story-of-rupert-brooke (edited) 6mo
See All 7 Comments
TrishB That‘s really interesting thanks! I haven‘t really paid much attention to the ‘war poets‘ so this was really eye opening! Will be used in future feminist killjoy rants I suspect! 6mo
Bookwomble @TrishB "Killjoy Feminist Rants": Title of your memoirs ?? I look forward to publication ? 6mo
TrishB That‘s definitely the title 😂 6mo
CarolynM Interesting article, thanks for the link. 6mo
43 likes7 comments
quote
Bookwomble
1914 & Other Poems | Rupert Brooke
post image

"And after, ere the night is born,
Do hares come out about the corn?
Oh, is the water sweet and cool,
Gentle and brown, above the pool?
And laughs the immortal river still
Under the mill, under the mill?
Say, is there Beauty yet to find?
And Certainty? and Quiet kind?
Deep meadows yet, for to forget
The lies, and truths, and pain?… oh! yet
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?”

- The Old Vicarage, Grantchester

quote
Bookwomble
1914 & Other Poems | Rupert Brooke
post image

“I would think of a thousand things,
Lovely and durable, and taste them slowly,
One after one, like tasting sweet food.
I have need to busy my heart with quietude."

- The Busy Heart

kspenmoll 🩵 6mo
33 likes1 stack add1 comment
quote
Bookwomble
1914 & Other Poems | Rupert Brooke
post image

“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 the suns of home."

- The Soldier

A bit jingoistic for my taste, but still affecting ???????

vivastory I watched They Shall Not Grow Old by Jackson at the beginning of the year. Have you seen it? 6mo
Bookwomble @vivastory I haven't seen that, but I would like to. I caught the last hour of 1917 a couple of months ago, though, and thought that was a fantastic film that I want to watch in full. 6mo
vivastory 1917 is worth watching. I have an unusually strong memory of it as it was the last movie I saw before movie theatres closed due to the pandemic. I def recommend the Jackson documentary. I had heard good things about it, but was really really impressed. 6mo
34 likes3 comments
quote
Bookwomble
1914 & Other Poems | Rupert Brooke
post image

"We have built a house that is not for Time's throwing,
We have gained a peace unshaken by pain for ever.
War knows no power, Safe shall be my going,
Secretly armed against all death's endeavour;
Safe though all safety's lost; safe where men fall;
And if these poor limbs die, safest of all."

- Safety

quote
Bookwomble
1914 & Other Poems | Rupert Brooke
post image

"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!"

- Peace

#FirstLineFridays #ShyBookOwl