Page:Rupert Brooke and the Intellectual Imagination, Walter de la Mare, 1919.djvu/45

Rh Simply because things as they are are not as they should be, we take refuge at times from the defeats and despairs of this mortal existence in satire and scepticism, a passing doubt in man, in goodness, in the heavenly power. So, too, did he. He kept piling up the fuel for those "flaming brains" of his; took life at the flood. When ashes succeeded the blaze and the tide ran low and the mud-flats shimmered in the mocking sunshine; why, he could at least be frank. Each in turn he accepted life's promises; when it broke some of them—as it sometimes must in order to keep the others—he closely examined the pieces, whatever the pang. One promise, however, would never have failed him: "There are only three good things in this world: one is to read, one is to write, the other is to live poetry." The last is by far the most difficult, and Mrs Grundy is not uncharmed to discover that not all the poets are masters of the art. But there it is: they are his own deliberate words; and he meant what he said.

What, if he had lived, he would have done in this world is a fascinating but an unanswerable question. This only can be said: that he would have gone on being his wonderful self. Radium is inexhaustible. As we look back