Page:Collected poems of Rupert Brooke.djvu/22

INTRODUCTION complete. In its whispering embraces of sense, in the terror of seizure of the spirit, in the tranquil euthanasia of the end by the touch of speechless beauty, it seems to me a true symbol of life whole and entire. It is beautiful in language and feeling, with an extraordinary clarity and rise of power; and, above all, though rare in experience, it is real. A young poet's poem; but it has a quality never captured by perfect art. A poem for poets, no doubt; but that is the best kind. So, too, the poem, entitled "Sleeping Out," charms me and stirs me with its golden clangors and crying flames of emotion as it mounts up to "the white one flame," to "the laughter and the lips of light." It is like a holy Italian picture,—remote, inaccessible, alone. The "white flame" seems to have had a mystic meaning to the boy; it occurs repeatedly. And another poem,—not to make too long a story of my private enthusiasms—"Ante Aram,"—wakes all my classical blood,—

But these things are arcana.

IV

There is a grave in Scyros, amid the white and pinkish marble of the isle, the wild thyme and the poppies, near the green and blue waters. There Rupert Brooke was buried. Thither have gone the thoughts of his countrymen, and the hearts of the young especially. It will long be so. For a new star shines in the English heavens.

G. E. W.

Beverly, Mass., October, 1915.