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Poetical Works
The reputation of Rupert Brooke has survived many changes of literary fashion since his death in the Aegean in 1915, aged twenty-eight. This standard edition of his poems was edited and arranged by his great friend Geoffrey Keynes. It includes a considerable number of early pieces, among them two of his longest poems, "The Pyramids" and "The Bastille".
216 pages, Hardcover
First published May 7, 1946
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About the author
Rupert Brooke
223 books114 followersRupert Chawner Brooke (middle name sometimes given as Chaucer) was an English poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the First World War, especially The Soldier. He was also known for his boyish good looks, which it is alleged prompted the Irish poet W.B. Yeats to describe him as "the handsomest young man in England."
Brooke was born at 5 Hillmorton Road in Rugby, Warwickshire, the second of the three sons of William Parker Brooke, a Rugby schoolmaster, and Ruth Mary Brooke, née Cotterill. He was educated at two independent schools in the market town of Rugby, Warwickshire; Hillbrow School and Rugby School.
While travelling in Europe he prepared a thesis entitled John Webster and the Elizabethan Drama, which won him a scholarship to King's College, Cambridge, where he became a member of the Cambridge Apostles, helped found the Marlowe Society drama club and acted in plays including the Cambridge Greek Play.
Brooke made friends among the Bloomsbury group of writers, some of whom admired his talent while others were more impressed by his good looks. Virginia Woolf boasted to Vita Sackville-West of once going skinny-dipping with Brooke in a moonlit pool when they were at Cambridge together.
Brooke belonged to another literary group known as the Georgian Poets and was one of the most important of the Dymock poets, associated with the Gloucestershire village of Dymock where he spent some time before the war. He also lived in the Old Vicarage, Grantchester.
Brooke suffered a severe emotional crisis in 1912, caused by sexual confusion and jealousy, resulting in the breakdown of his long relationship with Ka Cox (Katherine Laird Cox). Brooke's paranoia that Lytton Strachey had schemed to destroy his relationship with Cox by encouraging her to see Henry Lamb precipitated his break with his Bloomsbury Group friends and played a part in his nervous collapse and subsequent rehabilitation trips to Germany.
As part of his recuperation, Brooke toured the United States and Canada to write travel diaries for the Westminster Gazette. He took the long way home, sailing across the Pacific and staying some months in the South Seas. Much later it was revealed that he may have fathered a daughter with a Tahitian woman named Taatamata with whom he seems to have enjoyed his most complete emotional relationship. Brooke fell heavily in love several times with both men and women, although his bisexuality was edited out of his life by his first literary executor. Many more people were in love with him. Brooke was romantically involved with the actress Cathleen Nesbitt and was once engaged to Noel Olivier, whom he met, when she was aged 15, at the progressive Bedales School.
Brooke was an inspiration to poet John Gillespie Magee, Jr., author of the poem "High Flight". Magee idolised Brooke and wrote a poem about him ("Sonnet to Rupert Brooke"). Magee also won the same poetry prize at Rugby School which Brooke had won 34 years earlier.
As a war poet Brooke came to public attention in 1915 when The Times Literary Supplement quoted two of his five sonnets (IV: The Dead and V: The Soldier) in full on 11 March and his sonnet V: The Soldier was read from the pulpit of St Paul's Cathedral on Easter Sunday (4 April). Brooke's most famous collection of poetry, containing all five sonnets, 1914 & Other Poems, was first published in May 1915 and, in testament to his popularity, ran to 11 further impressions that year and by June 1918 had reached its 24th impression; a process undoubtedly fueled through posthumous interest.
Brooke was born at 5 Hillmorton Road in Rugby, Warwickshire, the second of the three sons of William Parker Brooke, a Rugby schoolmaster, and Ruth Mary Brooke, née Cotterill. He was educated at two independent schools in the market town of Rugby, Warwickshire; Hillbrow School and Rugby School.
While travelling in Europe he prepared a thesis entitled John Webster and the Elizabethan Drama, which won him a scholarship to King's College, Cambridge, where he became a member of the Cambridge Apostles, helped found the Marlowe Society drama club and acted in plays including the Cambridge Greek Play.
Brooke made friends among the Bloomsbury group of writers, some of whom admired his talent while others were more impressed by his good looks. Virginia Woolf boasted to Vita Sackville-West of once going skinny-dipping with Brooke in a moonlit pool when they were at Cambridge together.
Brooke belonged to another literary group known as the Georgian Poets and was one of the most important of the Dymock poets, associated with the Gloucestershire village of Dymock where he spent some time before the war. He also lived in the Old Vicarage, Grantchester.
Brooke suffered a severe emotional crisis in 1912, caused by sexual confusion and jealousy, resulting in the breakdown of his long relationship with Ka Cox (Katherine Laird Cox). Brooke's paranoia that Lytton Strachey had schemed to destroy his relationship with Cox by encouraging her to see Henry Lamb precipitated his break with his Bloomsbury Group friends and played a part in his nervous collapse and subsequent rehabilitation trips to Germany.
As part of his recuperation, Brooke toured the United States and Canada to write travel diaries for the Westminster Gazette. He took the long way home, sailing across the Pacific and staying some months in the South Seas. Much later it was revealed that he may have fathered a daughter with a Tahitian woman named Taatamata with whom he seems to have enjoyed his most complete emotional relationship. Brooke fell heavily in love several times with both men and women, although his bisexuality was edited out of his life by his first literary executor. Many more people were in love with him. Brooke was romantically involved with the actress Cathleen Nesbitt and was once engaged to Noel Olivier, whom he met, when she was aged 15, at the progressive Bedales School.
Brooke was an inspiration to poet John Gillespie Magee, Jr., author of the poem "High Flight". Magee idolised Brooke and wrote a poem about him ("Sonnet to Rupert Brooke"). Magee also won the same poetry prize at Rugby School which Brooke had won 34 years earlier.
As a war poet Brooke came to public attention in 1915 when The Times Literary Supplement quoted two of his five sonnets (IV: The Dead and V: The Soldier) in full on 11 March and his sonnet V: The Soldier was read from the pulpit of St Paul's Cathedral on Easter Sunday (4 April). Brooke's most famous collection of poetry, containing all five sonnets, 1914 & Other Poems, was first published in May 1915 and, in testament to his popularity, ran to 11 further impressions that year and by June 1918 had reached its 24th impression; a process undoubtedly fueled through posthumous interest.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
March 3, 2017
It seems almost a misnomer to refer to Rupert Brooke as ‘A Poet of the Great War’ – as he is somewhat erroneously and almost disingenuously described. Whilst Brooke fought in the war and tragically died from his wounds / septicaemia in 1915, judging by this collection (which I understand to be more or less comprehensive) he had very little literary output during the all too short period from the outbreak of the Great War until his untimely death. The key war related piece, the one oft quoted and the one which seems to have cemented his literary reputation is ‘1914’ and in particular ‘v The Soldier’ as follows:
“If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven”.
Interestingly enough, this collection includes poetic ‘fragments’ as a coda to the completed works. This provides us with a moving and tantalising insight into what Brooke was working on during the Great War prior to his sad demise. Clearly the tragedy here (over and above the obvious human and personal tragedy) – is a literary one, the loss of the works that Brooke would undoubtedly have gone on to produce had he survived the hostilities.
The vast and overwhelming majority of this collection dates from pre 1914 and for the most part seems to concentrate on central themes of: love, loss, youth, memory and death. Brooke was clearly a very different kind of poet from Owen and Sassoon and as such, his works aren’t for me infused with the same visceral and elemental power as theirs. However, Brookes’ very different poems, which are drawn from overwhelmingly different subject matter(s) possess a music, a lyricism and an emotional power of a very different kind.
The poems that stand out for me are as follows:
1914
The Funeral of Youth
Love
Jealousy
The Voice
It is well
The one before last
Kindliness
Dining Room Tea
Little dogs day
The Call
The Beginning
The Descent
Flight
Dust
Desertion
Home
Song
Dead Men’s Love
The Hill
“If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven”.
Interestingly enough, this collection includes poetic ‘fragments’ as a coda to the completed works. This provides us with a moving and tantalising insight into what Brooke was working on during the Great War prior to his sad demise. Clearly the tragedy here (over and above the obvious human and personal tragedy) – is a literary one, the loss of the works that Brooke would undoubtedly have gone on to produce had he survived the hostilities.
The vast and overwhelming majority of this collection dates from pre 1914 and for the most part seems to concentrate on central themes of: love, loss, youth, memory and death. Brooke was clearly a very different kind of poet from Owen and Sassoon and as such, his works aren’t for me infused with the same visceral and elemental power as theirs. However, Brookes’ very different poems, which are drawn from overwhelmingly different subject matter(s) possess a music, a lyricism and an emotional power of a very different kind.
The poems that stand out for me are as follows:
1914
The Funeral of Youth
Love
Jealousy
The Voice
It is well
The one before last
Kindliness
Dining Room Tea
Little dogs day
The Call
The Beginning
The Descent
Flight
Dust
Desertion
Home
Song
Dead Men’s Love
The Hill
November 21, 2013
IF I should die, think only this of me;
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, 5
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less 10
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, 5
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less 10
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
Read
March 30, 2018I prefer Owen and Sassoon...
September 12, 2022
using IB terms this is a low four/high three. some of his poems are very nice but a lot of them are just poems.
July 24, 2022
Brooke is justifiably known for his WWI poems, though his pigeon-holing as a "war poet" is perhaps unfortunate. He wrote some 120 poems, all of them collected here, of which only six were about the war - including his cycle of five sonnets, the last of which is the famous "The Soldier" (starting "If I should die, think only this of me...").
Yet there is far more to Brooke than that handful of works suggests. His earliest works were, perhaps, juvenile musings of a lovelorn teen, but the poems he wrote in the years immediately before the war show a bright wit and a wry turn of phrase. Many of these poems show his true forte, poems of a lover to and for his partner. Others detail his travels around the Pacific and Europe, ironically the best of which were written in Germany - including his best-known non-war poem, "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester". Brooke favoured the sonnet form, in which he was adept. Many of his pieces show a maturity beyond his years (he died at just 27) - even some of his teenage works, such as "The Pyramids", have memorable power. Intriguingly, the poems in this book are arranged from last to first, 1915 to 1903.
Yet there is far more to Brooke than that handful of works suggests. His earliest works were, perhaps, juvenile musings of a lovelorn teen, but the poems he wrote in the years immediately before the war show a bright wit and a wry turn of phrase. Many of these poems show his true forte, poems of a lover to and for his partner. Others detail his travels around the Pacific and Europe, ironically the best of which were written in Germany - including his best-known non-war poem, "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester". Brooke favoured the sonnet form, in which he was adept. Many of his pieces show a maturity beyond his years (he died at just 27) - even some of his teenage works, such as "The Pyramids", have memorable power. Intriguingly, the poems in this book are arranged from last to first, 1915 to 1903.
June 9, 2018
Review - I read this when I was in high school as part of a module on War Literature, but what really brought it home to me was a trip to northern France and Belgium on a tour of war sites i.e. Menin Gate, Thiepval, etc. There is no better way to get a sense of the barbarity, loss and incredible strength in the First World War than by reading these poems in one of the places where men sacrificed themselves or are buried underfoot.
General Subject/s? - World War One / Poetry / War Poetry / Literature
Recommend? – Yes
Rating - 20/20
General Subject/s? - World War One / Poetry / War Poetry / Literature
Recommend? – Yes
Rating - 20/20
September 4, 2019
I know I read and was entranced by a book of Rupert Brooke's poetry the summer after I graduated high school but I'm not 100 percent sure it was this volume. I enjoyed his poetry and thought he was an interesting, if tragic, character.
In my journal of the time, I noted that these were some of my favorite poems:
"Day That I have Loved"
"Failure"
"Dawn"
"Kindliness"
"The Life Beyond"
"Libido"
"Jealousy"
"Song"
"The Voice" (one of my very favorites)
"Dining Room Tea"
"The Dead"
"The Soldier" (the poem he's best-known for)
"The Great Lover"
In my journal of the time, I noted that these were some of my favorite poems:
"Day That I have Loved"
"Failure"
"Dawn"
"Kindliness"
"The Life Beyond"
"Libido"
"Jealousy"
"Song"
"The Voice" (one of my very favorites)
"Dining Room Tea"
"The Dead"
"The Soldier" (the poem he's best-known for)
"The Great Lover"
July 22, 2022
nie porwały mnir ale niektóre byly naprawdę spoko
August 6, 2023
Really enjoyed. Fave poems in the collection were ‘The Way that Lovers Use’ and ‘Retrospect’.
January 22, 2023
I hadn't read more than a couple of Rupert Brooke poems before coming to this collection (which I picked up second-hand, on a whim, at my local Oxfam), but I'm extremely glad to have become more closely acquainted with his oeuvre. I'd expected an overwhelming quantity of war poetry, but this collection is interestingly varied: love poetry and nature poetry stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Brooke's writings about the Great War.
His poetry is lyrical, vivid, and often shot through with a bitterness and melancholia that I find deeply affecting. Something in his style (perhaps the lyricism combined with a certain fascination for mythology and mysticism) recalls for me another of my favourite poets, W.B. Yeats; I was unsurprised, therefore, to discover that the two were contemporaries in the Bloomsbury set.
In "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester", I relished our shared affection for Cambridge and its environs, and in "The Soldier", I recalled the haunting beauty that first drew me to explore more of Brooke's work. Additionally, however, this collection contains a long list of poems I've discovered for the first time, love, and certainly intend to re-read frequently. Among them, "The Dead", "Love", "The Busy Heart", and "He Wonders Whether to Praise or to Blame Her" stand out as particular favourites. I'm very happy to have this collection on my personal shelves.
His poetry is lyrical, vivid, and often shot through with a bitterness and melancholia that I find deeply affecting. Something in his style (perhaps the lyricism combined with a certain fascination for mythology and mysticism) recalls for me another of my favourite poets, W.B. Yeats; I was unsurprised, therefore, to discover that the two were contemporaries in the Bloomsbury set.
In "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester", I relished our shared affection for Cambridge and its environs, and in "The Soldier", I recalled the haunting beauty that first drew me to explore more of Brooke's work. Additionally, however, this collection contains a long list of poems I've discovered for the first time, love, and certainly intend to re-read frequently. Among them, "The Dead", "Love", "The Busy Heart", and "He Wonders Whether to Praise or to Blame Her" stand out as particular favourites. I'm very happy to have this collection on my personal shelves.
August 19, 2016
my paternal grandmother sent me this book, which was my introduction to rupert brooke. I memorized the hill for 10th grade english class (it was supposed to be a 15 line or more poem and the hill is a sonnet but I think I fudged a line break when I handwrote it so it would qualify). that's my favorite poem of brooke's. (I'm kind of surprised I didn't just recite jabberwocky, which I memorized as my audition for the 6th grade play). brooke is one of those british poets who died ridiculously young - and not of war wounds, but an infected insect bite.
I'm a pacifist, and patriotism/nationalism isn't really my bag but I do have an idealized longing for england, as my parents transplanted me from there to the US when I was 3, so brooke's idyllic descriptions appeal to me. he became unpopular for his naive views of war; but let's face it, many people think about war that way, as more meaningful than regular life, as a path to honor and comradeship, even many of those who have participated. brooke was privileged in many ways, and he wrote what he knew and what he imagined, and I can't really fault him for that. he was short of 30 when he died, there's a lot he never learned.
I'm a pacifist, and patriotism/nationalism isn't really my bag but I do have an idealized longing for england, as my parents transplanted me from there to the US when I was 3, so brooke's idyllic descriptions appeal to me. he became unpopular for his naive views of war; but let's face it, many people think about war that way, as more meaningful than regular life, as a path to honor and comradeship, even many of those who have participated. brooke was privileged in many ways, and he wrote what he knew and what he imagined, and I can't really fault him for that. he was short of 30 when he died, there's a lot he never learned.
April 24, 2021
Rupert Brooke will probably always be remembered for his poem "The Soldier", with its famous opening:
If I should die, think only this of me :
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.
His oddly idealistic poems written on the verge of the First World War seem quite misguided in retrospect, although one of the two sonnets titled "The Dead" (the one that opens Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!) manages to transcend the empty-headed militarism that predominates his late poems.
Outside of the war-themed verses, there's not much from Brooke's body of work that is worth reading today, exceptions being "Wagner", "Failure", and "Sonnet: I said I splendidly loved you". The rest of the poems in this slim collection are completely forgettable.
If I should die, think only this of me :
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.
His oddly idealistic poems written on the verge of the First World War seem quite misguided in retrospect, although one of the two sonnets titled "The Dead" (the one that opens Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!) manages to transcend the empty-headed militarism that predominates his late poems.
Outside of the war-themed verses, there's not much from Brooke's body of work that is worth reading today, exceptions being "Wagner", "Failure", and "Sonnet: I said I splendidly loved you". The rest of the poems in this slim collection are completely forgettable.
April 13, 2016
The lyrical magic of Brooke can not be faulted, with The Hill being my favourite in the collection. Therefore, it saddens me that not more have heard of this poet and his wonderful work. I shall now be on the outlook for others of Brooke's work.
Anyway on to the review, this edition is especially useful in allowing the reader to travel back through Brooke's poetic journey and his honing of the craft. His later subtle and lyrical work is arguably better than his earlier at times clumsy work but all deserve a read. Below are my personal favourites from the collection most in yearly order:
Anyway on to the review, this edition is especially useful in allowing the reader to travel back through Brooke's poetic journey and his honing of the craft. His later subtle and lyrical work is arguably better than his earlier at times clumsy work but all deserve a read. Below are my personal favourites from the collection most in yearly order:
1903
It is well
1904
Dedication
The Path of Dreams
1905
In January
Evening
August
The Bastille
1906
Vanitas
The Beginning
1907
The Wayfarers
1908
Seaside
The Day I loved
The Jolly Company
Choriambic 1+2
1909
Sonnet
Lust
Dust (1909-10)
1910
Kindness
Success
The Descent
The Hill
1913
Fafaia
Heaven
One Day
The Funeral of Youth Threnody
The Way Lovers use
The Night Journey
Love
1914
The Treasure
May 29, 2015
I had this book for at least ten years before I read it. I picked it up at a used-book store when I was sweeping the place for poetry books. I'm sorry I waited so long. Brooke is the best new (to me) poet I've come across in a long time. I've always known I'd come to the Georgian poets eventually, that true stock of poetry from the good old tradition, the thread that was sadly cut off by the Great War in Europe and the realms of poesy. Modernism ruined the matter and meter of poetry, killed its audience, and sent the true heirs of the English poetic tradition into exile, where they cower together, few and unknown. Any of the nonsense writers of the last century could only dream of doing what Brooke did; no doubt they daren't read him for shame.
April 16, 2015
Enjoyable quick read. Some memorable material I will definitely revisit.
I was surprised at how few poems were from the war years. Not sure I would have read it if I had known this.
Best known for his poem The Soldier.
I was surprised at how few poems were from the war years. Not sure I would have read it if I had known this.
Best known for his poem The Soldier.
October 22, 2013
Such a baby in his poems. He writes about love, or love lost, in a kind of "know it all" way. He writes much about death - did he foresee his own death at a young age?
November 28, 2023
I don’t think a poet has ever had such a life altering on me. i feel so unbelievably seen and understood
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews