Page:Collected poems of Rupert Brooke.djvu/30

 Death, unappeasable by prayer or gold;

Death is the end, the end!"

Proud, then, clear-eyed and laughing, go to greet

Death as a friend!

Exile of immortality, strongly wise,

Strain through the dark with undesirous eyes

To what may lie beyond it. Sets your star,

O heart, for ever! Yet, behind the night,

Waits for the great unborn, somewhere afar,

Some white tremendous daybreak. And the light,

Returning, shall give back the golden hours,

Ocean a windless level, Earth a lawn

Spacious and full of sunlit dancing-places,

And laughter, and music, and, among the flowers,

The gay child-hearts of men, and the child-faces

O heart, in the great dawn!