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.