Pour out your bounty, moon of radiant shining
On all this shattered flesh, these quiet forms;
For these were slain, so strangely still reclining,
In the noblest cause was ever waged with arms.
SONNETS 1917
[To the Memory of Rupert Brooke]
1. FOR ENGLAND
Though heaven be packed with joy-bewildering
Pleasures of soul and heart and mind, yet who
Would willingly let slip, freely let go
Earth’s mortal loveliness; go wandering
Where never the late bird is heard to sing,
Nor full-sailed cloud-galleons wander slow;
No pathways in the woods; no afterglow,
When the air’s fire and magic with sense of spring?
So the dark horror clouds us, and the dread
Of the unknown.... But if it must be, then
What better passing than to go out like men
For England, giving all in one white glow?
Whose bodies shall lie in earth as on a bed,
And as the Will directs our spirits may go
2. PAIN
Pain, pain continual; pain unending;
Hard even to the roughest, but to those
Hungry for beauty.... Not the wisest knows,
Nor most pitiful-hearted, what the wending
Of one hour’s way meant. Grey monotony lending
Weight to the grey skies, grey mud where goes
An army of grey bedrenched scarecrows in rows
Careless at last of cruellest Fate-sending.
Seeing the pitiful eyes of men foredone,
Or horses shot, too tired merely to stir,
Dying in shell-holes both, slain by the mud.
Men broken, shrieking even to hear a gun.—
Till pain grinds down, or lethargy numbs her,
The amazed heart cries angrily out on God.
3. SERVITUDE
If it were not for England, who would bear
This heavy servitude one moment more?
To keep a brothel, sweep and wash the floor
Of filthiest hovels were noble to compare
With this brass-cleaning life. Now here, now there
Harried in foolishness, scanned curiously o’er
By fools made brazen by conceit, and store
Of antique witticisms thin and bare.