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Giant Hours With Poet Preachers

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"Love is a flame;--we have beaconed the world's night.
A city:--and we have built it, these and I.
An emperor:--we have taught the world to die."

The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke.

And again in that same great poem:

"--Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake,
And give what's left of love again, and make
New friends, now strangers...."

The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke.


THE GOSPEL OF LOVE FOR ONE'S COUNTRY

And who shall say where the line of cleavage is between that love which
clings to Friends; and that greater or conjugal love which moulds man
and woman into one; and love for children, blood of one's blood, and
love of country; and love of God? I say that those who are truly the
great Lovers of the world love all of these and that not one is
omitted. At least the truly great Lovers have the capacity for love
of all these types. I have found no expression of paternal love in
Brooke, for he had not come to that great experience of life before
Death claimed him. And because Death robbed him of that experience
Death robbed us of a rare interpretation of that special type of Love.
But of all these other types which I have mentioned we have a clear
expression in the slender volume of poems that he left us as our
heritage from his estate. And, since we have already read one beautiful
expression of this love for his country in the opening paragraphs of
this chapter, we will add here another stanza of that noble expression
of his love for old England.

"And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven."

The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke.

What a voice for the times! What a voice for America! Would that some
American Brooke might arise to sing this same deep song.


A GOSPEL OF THE GODS

Rupert Brooke had a wide range of interests as indeed any great Lover
of Life and living must have. He expressed the hopelessness of the
heathen gods in a poem which he called "On the Death of Smet-Smet, the
Hippopotomus-Goddess" in lines that fairly sparkle with the electricity
of destruction and sarcasm:

"She was wrinkled and huge and hideous? She was our Mother.
She was lustful and lewd?--but a God; we had none other.
In the day She was hidden and dumb, but at nightfall moaned in the
shade;
We shuddered and gave Her Her will in the darkness; we were afraid.

(The People without)

"She sent us pain,
And we bowed before Her;
She smiled again
And bade us adore Her.
She solaced our woe
And soothed our sighing;
And what shall we do
Now God is dying?"

The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke.

And so it was that with the deepest sense of understanding, with the
deepest sympathy, without intolerance Brooke, in this one verse sets
the Heathen gods where they belong and sets us where we belong in our
relations to those who worship these gods and goddesses. It is all they
have. We have no right to sneer and scorn until we are able to give
them better. These poor Egyptians knew no other God. They said
plaintively "but a God; we have none other"; and "And what shall we do
now God is dying?" The crime of destroying faith in a lesser god until
one has seen and can make seeable the real God is the greatest crime of
civilization. And to this writer's way of thinking there is no greater
sin than that of Intolerance; a sin to which a certain portion of the
institutionalized church is prone. Noyes shot the fist of indignation
at this type of intolerance straight from a manly shoulder when he
said:

"How foolish, then, you will agree
Are those who think that all must see
The world alike, or those who scorn
Another who, perchance, was born
Where in a different dream from theirs
What they called Sin to him were prayers?"

The Collected Poems of Alfred Noyes.

Brooke saw the same thing and had great tolerance for those who
worshipped the "unknown gods"; worshipped the best they knew, although
it were a feeble worship. He understood their outcry that they knew not
what to do, now that their god was dying:

"She was so strong;
But death is stronger.
She ruled us long;
But time is longer.
She solaced our woe
And soothed our sighing;
And what shall we do
Now God is dying?"

The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke.


THE GOSPEL OF ONE GOD

Then sweeping upward, although one must admit, with groping, reaching
eagerness, this young poet tried to find, and at last did find, the one
God. He mentions this God that he found more than any other one thing
about which he wrote, so far as I can find. In one slender volume are
more than a dozen striking references. Take for example the last
fifteen lines of "The Song of the Pilgrims":

"O Thou,
God of all long desirous roaming,
Our hearts are sick of fruitless homing,
And crying after lost desire.
Hearten us onward! as with fire
Consuming dreams of other bliss.
The best Thou givest, giving this
Sufficient thing--to travel still
Over the plain, beyond the hill,
Unhesitating through the shade,
Amid the silence unafraid,
Till, at some hidden turn, one sees
Against the black and muttering trees
Thine altar, wonderfully white,
Among the Forests of the Night."

The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke.

Or again, from "Ambarvalia":

"But laughing and half-way up to heaven,
With wind and hill and star,
I yet shall keep before I sleep,
Your Ambarvalia."

The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke.

Immortality, which goes hand in hand with the God of immortality, the
God of the "Everlasting Arms," is voiced in "Dining-Room Tea," a poem
addressed to one whom he loved:

"For suddenly, and other whence,
I looked on your magnificence.
I saw the stillness and the light,
And you, august, immortal, white,
Holy and strange; and every glint,
Posture and jest and thought and tint
Freed from the mask of transiency,
Triumphant in eternity,
Immote, immortal."

The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke.

Then, speaking of the war and peace with great yearning and great
faith, the young poet cried a new glory in what he calls "God's
Hour" in a poem on "Peace":

"Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour,
And caught our youth and wakened us from sleeping,
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping."

The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke.

And who has not felt this, but has not been able to thus express it?
And who has not seen that somehow, strangely, mysteriously, wondrously,
the youth not only of England, but of America has leaped to "God's
Hour," as Brooke calls this war; leaped from play, and from
listlessness in spiritual things; leaped from indifference to things of
the eternities; leaped to a magnificent heroism, selflessness,
sacrifice, brotherhood; leaped to a new and Godlike nobility.

To all who mourn for their dead lads comes the cheering word of Brooke,
who himself paid the great debt of love. It comes out of a poem called
"Safety." Read it, you who mourn, and be comforted:

"Dear! of all happy in the hour, most blest
He who has found our hid security,
Assured in the dark tides of the world that rest,
And hear our word, 'Who is so safe as we?'
'We have found safety with all things undying!'"

The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke.

"We have found safety with all things undying." Brooke heard God's word
as did the prophet of old crying, "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people,
saith the Lord," and this sonnet comes as a personal message to
mourning mother and father in America. As they listen they hear the
voices of those they loved crying: "Who is so safe as we? We have
found safety with all things undying." Thank God that this poet, though
young, lived long enough, and saw enough of war and death to give this
heartening word to a world which weeps and wearies with war and woe and
want! Thus in this new immortality we shall

"Learn all we lacked before; hear, know and say
What this tumultuous body now denies:
And feel, who have laid our groping hands away;
And see, no longer blinded by our eyes."

The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke.

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