IT sometimes happens that a hero is remembered more for the true man he was than for any fair deeds he may have wrought. Such a man was that “very perfect gentle knight,” Sir Philip Sidney. A scholar and a poet, a courtier and a soldier, he walked with grave men without becoming dull and with kings without becoming vain. In the “spacious times of great Elizabeth,” when brave men like Grenville, Drake, and Raleigh were finding a new world overseas for England, and rare souls like those of the Mermaid Tavern—Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, and “best Shakespeare,” himself—were building up a mighty kingdom of the mind and heart, Sir Philip Sidney was a bright figure in the realms of high adventure and of song.
It was not because of epic deeds or lyric verse, however, that all England mourned the death of the young soldier. It is not for his sword or for his song that he lives in the deathless company of England’s heroes, but for his knightly heart. The oft-repeated tale of how, mortally wounded, he forgot his own parching thirst and held out the water they brought him to a dying comrade, with the words, “Thy need is greater than mine,” lives in memory because in it the true Sidney still lives.
This is the story of one who has been called the Sidney of our own day—a young poet to whom the gods, it seemed, had given all their best gifts, graces of body and of mind. When it was known that he had gone to “do his bit” in the great war, people said fearfully, “Death loves a shining mark!” When news came that he was dead, it seemed as if the shadow of loss could never be lightened. Yet it is not for the song of the poet or the sacrifice of the soldier that he will be remembered, but for something rare and beautiful in the man himself that won the hearts of all who knew him.
They said of Rupert Brooke, “He is the ideal youth of England—of merry England!” It seemed as if something of all that was fair and brave and free in English days and English ways had passed into the bright blueness of his eyes, the warm glow under the tan of his cheeks, and the live, shining hair that waved back from his broad clear brow.
From the very beginning his country took him to herself. He first saw the light of a summer day at Rugby, under the shadow of the ivy-covered turrets where that great friend of boys, Thomas Arnold, was headmaster in the days of Tom Brown. Rupert’s father was assistant master at the school, and so the boy grew up on “The Close,” where the happy haunts of many happy boys were the charmed playground of his earliest years, and the football field the ringing plain of his first dreams of glory and achievement.
“What a wonderful world it was to be born into, that little England that was mine,” said Rupert, “and how it seemed as if the days were not half long enough for one to taste all the joys they brought. How I loved everything—sights and sounds, the feel and breath of living, stirring things! I loved not only rainbows and dewdrops sparkling in cool flowers, but also footprints in the dew and washed stones gay for an hour. Wet roofs beneath the lamplight had their gleam of enchantment, and the blue bitter smoke of an autumn fire was like magic incense.”
Most people have eyes to see only that which is exceptional—the exclamation marks of nature’s round, like sunset, moonrise, mountains wrapped in purple mists, or still water under a starry sky. They do not see the beauty in the changes of the common daylight, in familiar trees, a winding path, and a few dooryard posies.
But Rupert noted with lingering tenderness the shapes and colors of all the simple daily things.
“White plates and cups, clean-gleaming,
Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust;
And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new;
And new-peeled sticks; and shining pools on grass;—
All these have been my loves—”