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The wind of evening cried along the darkening trees,
Along the darkening trees, heavy with ancient pain,
Heavy with ancient pain from faded centuries,
From faded centuries.... O foolish thought and vain!
...

"I suddenly realise that the ambition of my life has been, since I was two, to go on a military expedition against Constantinople.", Letter from Rupert Brooke. (Died at Scyros, April 23rd, 1915.)

JUSTINIAN.
...

No creature stirs in the wide fields.
The rifted western heaven yields
The dying sun's illumination.
This is the hour of tribulation
When, with clear sight of eve engendered,...

Lord, I have seen at harvest festival
In a white lamp-lit fishing-village church,
How the poor folk, lacking fine decorations,
Offer the first-fruits of their various toils:...

THE ONE

The dead man's gone, the live man's sad, the dying leaf shakes on the tree,
The wind constrains the window-panes and moans like moaning of the sea,...

There is a far unfading city
Where bright immortal people are;
Remote from hollow shame and pity,
Their portals frame no guiding star
But blightless pleasure's moteless rays...

I vaguely wondered what you were about,
But never wrote when you had gone away;
Assumed you better, quenched the uneasy doubt
You might need faces, or have things to say....

Beloved, when my heart's awake to God
And all the world becomes His testimony,
In you I most do see, in your brave spirit,
Erect and certain, flashing deeds of light,...

Than farthest stars more distant,
A mile more,
A mile more,
A voice cries on insistent:
"You may smile more if you will;

"You may sing too and spring too;
But numb at last...

The leaves fall gently on the grass,
And all the willow trees, and poplar trees, and elder trees
That bend above her where she sleeps,
O all the willow trees, the willow trees
Breathe sighs upon her tomb....

When I see truth, do I seek truth
Only that I may things denote,
And, rich by striving, deck my youth
As with a vain unusual coat?

Or seek I truth for other ends:...

Wind waves the reeds by the river,
Grey sky lids the leaden water.
Ducks fly low across the water,
Three flying: one quacks sadly.

Grey are the sky and the water,...

My soul, it shall not take us,
O we will escape
This world that strives to break us
And cast us to its shape;
Its chisel shall not enter,
Its fire shall not touch,
Hard from rim to centre,...

Death in the cold grey morning
Came to the man where he lay;
And the wind shivered, and the tree shuddered
And the dawn was grey.

And the face of the man was grey in the dawn,...

I

When I was a boy there was a friend of mine:
We thought ourselves warriors and grown folk swine,
Stupid old animals who never understood
And never had an impulse and said "you must be good."
...

Moonlit woodland, veils of green,
Caves of empty dark between;
Veils of green from rounded arms
Drooping, that the moonlight charms.
Tranced the trees, grass beneath
Silent.......

The room is full of the peace of night,
The small flames murmur and flicker and sway,
Within me is neither shadow, nor light,
Nor night, nor twilight, nor dawn, nor day.
...

Airy and quick and wise
In the shed light of the sun,
You clasp with friendly eyes
The thoughts from mine that run.

But something breaks the link;
I solitary stand
By a giant gully's brink...

I and myself swore enmity. Alack,
Myself has tied my hands behind my back.
Yielding, I know there's no excuse in them,
I was accomplice to the stratagem.

This dense hard ground I tread.
These iron bars that ripple past,
Will they unshaken stand when I am dead
And my deep thoughts outlast?

Is it my spirit slips,
Falls, like this leaf I kick aside;...