Page:Collected poems of Rupert Brooke.djvu/81

 TOWN AND COUNTRY

, where love's stuff is body, arm and side

Are stabbing-sweet 'gainst chair and lamp and wall.

In every touch more intimate meanings hide;

And flaming brains are the white heart of all.

Here, million pulses to one centre beat:

Closed in by men's vast friendliness, alone,

Two can be drunk with solitude, and meet

On the sheer point where sense with knowing's one.

Here the green-purple clanging royal night,

And the straight lines and silent walls of town,

And roar, and glare, and dust, and myriad white

Undying passers, pinnacle and crown

Intensest heavens between close-lying faces

By the lamp's airless fierce ecstatic fire;

And we've found love in little hidden places,

Under great shades, between the mist and mire.

Stay! though the woods are quiet, and you've heard

Night creep along the hedges. Never go

Where tangled foliage shrouds the crying bird,

And the remote winds sigh, and waters flow!