A POET IN ACTION.

Otago Witness, Issue 3244, 17 May 1916, Page 69

A POET IN ACTION.

By C. R. Allex. "Yes. We heard about a poet who died at Lemnos." The speaker w r as a young soldier lately leturned from Gailipoh with a disabled arm. Ho had played his part in the epic from Anzac to Suvla Bay, and he had about him that mysterious aloofness, the air of a man set apart which belongs to one who has taken part in a great and ennobling tragedy. He had left the Dominion with the Main body, a typical young New Zealander, intelligent, keen", somewhat restive under authority, apt, I suspect, at censure, and youthfilly ironical; a leader of young m en who had tasted of the sweets of office among them, a graduate of one of our own university colleges, and a student of human nature on his own account. He had come back with the burden of the whole tragedy upon his shoulders, having behind him in their soldiers' graves most of his comrades and his closest friend. We had been speaking of Rupert Brooke, whose death from sunstroke at Lemnos had come as such a bio v.- to many in England who had looked upon the young poet as one of the new stars in the literary firmament. I could not help feeling how perfectly Bupert Brooke had touched with his genius the tragedy and the triumph which my young soldier unconsciously echoed in his voice and manner. What he had actually seen Rupert Brooke had foreseen, which is the way of all true poets. Those two young men, the wounded New Zealander and the poet, of whose death at Lemnos he had heard a passing rumour, were bound together in a communion and fellowship which transcended space and time. They had partaken of the same cup, and their eyes were opened to truths at which T could only make a feeble guess. Tt is for the poet to speak -/here others can but feel; so Rupert Brooke speaks in the name of this young *?!dier as he speaks in the name of thousands such. That is his achievement; and surely it is an achievement that will place him beyond the reach rf time. His opportunity was unique, and he seized upon his opportunity. It would almost seem that the writing of those war sonnets was the one thing he had been sent into the world to do. Having sung from his heart, he sealed the thing he had come to sing with his life. So far back as 1906, when he had scarcely emerged from the condition of a schoolboy, Rupert Brooke was looked upon as one who was to take his place among the poets. I can remember hearing of a young poet at King's, in much the same vague way as my New Zealander had heard of a poet at Lemnos. Among the undergraduates of his day Rupert Brooke was marked out by the beauty of his person, the charm of his manner, and the quality of his poetic gifts. Those who knew him best seem to have been aware of some nresage of his early death about him. Elected to a fellowship of King's College, Cambridge, in 1913, he had already made his way into the outer courtyards of recognition. The year 1914 was to see him called suddenly to a lasting fame. The call came to him as it came to Samuel, and, like Samuel, he was ready. He took part in the naval expedition to Antwerp, and in the interval between Antwerp and the Dardanelles he wrote those five sonnets in which the thought and feeling of a poet't lifetime appear to be crystallised into five gems of self-expres-sion through the action of that new experience upon his soul. Up to this point Rupert Brooke had displayed a delicate, if somewhat wayward, genius. Some of his work was marred by a too great desire to outstrip the conventional, a hungering after primal reality that betrayed him into "what was nothinj? less than an amazing error in taste in some instances. Rightly or wrongly, I attribute these lapses to the tendency of his day at Cambridge among certain sets of clever young men to indulge in a kind of pagan pessimism, a very diverting pastime for those who are living a sheltered life, and are not immediately confronted by humiliating realities. These are mannerised productions —sparks, I suspect—struck from some reckless contest of wit. Their melancholy is as insincere as the joviality of most roysterers. Apart from these unfortunate productions there is much in Rupert Brooke's earlier poems which reminds one of Shelley. Here are the last two stanzas from "Day That I Have Loved." written when Brooke had but recently left Rugby : We found yon pale and quiet, and strangely crowned with flowers, Lovely and secret as a child. You came with us. Came harmily, hand in band with the young dancing hours, High on the downs at dawn. Yoice now and tencbrus. The grey sands curved before me. . . . Prom inland meadows Fragrant of June and clover floats the dark, and fills The hollow sea's dead face with little creeping shadows, And the- white silence brims tlio hollow of the hills. Close in the nest is folded every weary wing, Hushed all the joyful voices; and wc, who held you dear, Eastward we turn and homowa,rcl, alone, remembering. . . . Day that I loved, day that I loved, the night is here. Of his later poems there are several that would have established his claim, to bo considered a poet of the first order had he never written the war sonnets. Notable among these Is "The Great Lover," a work which seems to bring us into close touch with the vivid and lovable personality of the poet in. a very remarkable manner. Here he has accomplished what Wordsworth accomplished only in rare instances. He has touched those common objects which, unknown to us, make up so much of our life, with the fire of his passion and his love. This poem should be read in conjunction with the war sonnets. To my mind it is unique In English literature, for he has expressed the spirit of an age that is later than Tennyson or

Browning. He lets us into the secret of that sacrifice which so many young men of like mind with himself have made for us, and shows us a new way of heeding, their memory fresh : These have I loved: White plates and cups, clcan-gleatiling, Ringed with blue lines: and feathery fairy dust; Wet roofs beneath the lamplight; the strong crust Of friendly bread, and many tasting fcod; Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood; And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers; And flowers themselves that sway through sunny hours, Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon; Then, the cool kindliness of sheets that soon Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss Of blankets: grainy wood; Jive hair thai is Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen Unpassioncd beauty of a great machine. O dear my loves, O faithless, once again This one last gift I give: that after men Shall know, and later lovers, far removed, ' Praise you, "All these were lovelv"; sav "Ha loved." Of the five war sonnets some will appeal with greater force than others, according to the- temperament and circumstances of the reader. [ have room for only one 1 here, and choose the second sonnet to 'The Dead'' because of its relation to the lines I have just quoted : Blow out, you bugles, over the rich dead. There's none of these so louelv and poor of old, Jjut. dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold. _ These laid the world away; poured cut the red Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be Of work and joy; and that unhoped serene. That men cad age; and those who would have been, Their , >na ti;;-;. gave, theii immortality. Blow, bugles, blow. They brought, us, for our dearth, Holiness, lacked so long, and love, and pain. Honour has come back as a king to earth, And paid bis subjects with a royal wage; And nobleness walks in our ways again; And we have come into our heritage.