Page:Collected poems of Rupert Brooke.djvu/65

 The strange soft-handed depth subdues

Drowned colour there, but black to hues,

As death to living, decomposes—

Red darkness of the heart of roses,

Blue brilliant from dead starless skies,

And gold that lies behind the eyes,

The unknown unnameable sightless white

That is the essential flame of night,

Lustreless purple, hooded green,

The myriad hues that He between

Darkness and darkness! . ..

And all's one.

Gentle, embracing, quiet, dun,

The world he rests in, world he knows,

Perpetual curving. Only—grows

An eddy in that ordered falling,

A knowledge from the gloom, a calling

Weed in the wave, gleam in the mud—

The dark fire leaps along his blood;

Dateless and deathless, blind and still,

The intricate impulse works its will;

His woven world drops back; and he,

Sans providence, sans memory,

Unconscious and directly driven,

Fades to some dank sufficient heaven.

O world of lips, O world of laughter,

Where hope is fleet and thought flies after,

Of lights in the clear night, of cries