Rupert Brooke is dead. Straightaway he will be buried. The rest is silence.
Twice was "the sight" vouchsafed me:—in London when I told Eddie I would bespeak the boy's services; at Port Said when I bespoke them.
Death on the eve of battle, death on a wedding day—nothing so tragic save that most black mishap, death in action after peace has been signed. Death grins at my elbow. I cannot get him out of my thoughts. He is fed up with the old and sick—only the flower of the flock will serve him now, for God has started a celestial spring cleaning, and our star is to be scrubbed bright with the blood of our bravest and our best.
Youth and poetry are the links binding the children of the world to come to the grandsires of the world that was. War will smash, pulverise, sweep into the dustbins of eternity the whole fabric of the old world: therefore, the firstborn in intellect must die. Is that the reading of the riddle?
Almighty God, Watchman of the Milky Way, Shepherd of the Golden Stars, have mercy upon us, smallest of the heavenly Shiners. Our star burns dim as a corpse light: the huge black chasm of space closes in: if only by blood ...? Thy Will be done. En avant—at all costs—en avant!
CHAPTER V
THE LANDING
24th April, 1915. H.M.S. "Queen Elizabeth." Tenedos. Boarded the Queen Lizzie at 1.30 p.m. Anchored off Tenedos just before 4 p.m. Lay outside the roadstead; close by us is the British Fleet with an Armada of transports,—all at anchor. As we were closing up to them we spotted a floating mine which must have been passed touch-and-go during the night by all those warships and troopships. A good omen surely that not one of them fell foul of the death that lurks in that ugly, horned devil—not dead itself, but very much alive, for it answered a shot from one of our three pounders with the dull roar and spitting of fire and smoke bred for our benefit by the kindly German Kultur.