he said, when dreaming fondly and whimsically of his boyish days. And how he loved little shy, half-hidden things—elfin moss flowers, downy curled-up ferns under the dry leaves, the musty smell of the dead leaves themselves and of the moist, moldy earth. But he was never one of those who must seek beauty in the haunts of nature untouched by man. The splendid copper beech, kingly and kind, in the headmaster’s garden, and Dr. Arnold’s own fern-leaved tree, whose tender gleams and flickerings gladdened every one who lingered in its shade, were dearer than any aloof forest monarchs could have been.
It seemed as if all the things that Rupert saw and loved somehow became part of himself. Something of the swift life of darting birds, of quivering winged insects, and furtive scurrying creatures in fur was in the alert swiftness of his lithe young body. One found oneself thinking of fair fields under a bright sky, of hedgerows abloom, of all the singing, golden warmth that makes an English summer sweet, in looking into the glowing beauty of the boy’s eager face.
“Rupert can’t be spoiled or he would have been long ago,” said one of the Rugby boys. “He never stops to bother about what people say of him. Of course a chap who can play football and carry off school honors at the same time has something better to think about.”
It was true that young Brooke found his world full of many absorbing things. He was already entering upon the poet’s kingdom. Words, he found, could work mighty spells. All the rich pageantry of the days of knights and crusaders passed before him as a few verses sounded in his ears. Another line—and he saw
... magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
How splendid it would be to make fine, thrilling things live in words! He knew, though, that he could never live in the past or in the dream pictures that fancy painted. His life was in the real things of the present, and his song must be of the life he knew and felt. Would he ever be able to find singing words for all the singing life about him and within?
Sometimes he all but gave up the trial. How foolish to bother about writing poems when one might live them! A rush—a fine scrimmage—a chance for the goal—life in doing—that was better than any printed page. As he played on the eleven for Rugby it seemed as if mind and body were one. Life was strength and swiftness, and victory after effort.
But the young athlete, who knew the joy of playing and winning for his school, swept on by the cheers of his comrades, knew too the joy in the play of the mind, urged on by the secret longing of his heart. This inner athlete “rejoiced as a strong man to run a race” when he wrote his prize poem, “The Bastille.” He laughed to himself to think of how he had gone to the traditions of an old French prison for inspiration for the finest, freest verse he had yet made. It was plain now that he must be a poet. The things he loved should find an immortal life in his song. His successes at cricket and football could not compare with this triumph. There was no power like the mastery of the mind.
Going from Rugby to Cambridge, he soon won an enviable reputation as a man of parts and a poet of much promise. His keen appreciative mind, his ready wit and personal charm, made him a favorite with the best men of the university.
“I do not see why he need be a poet,” said Henry James, the American novelist and critic, who lived for many years in England. “Any one who can give such all around satisfaction as a human being should not be encouraged to specialize. Surely one who can be so much that makes life more worth while for every one who knows him, ought not to have to struggle to do things.”