Rupert Brooke

Choriambics — II

Here the flame that was ash, shrine that was void,
    lost in the haunted wood,
  I have tended and loved, year upon year, I in the solitude
  Waiting, quiet and glad-eyed in the dark, knowing that once a gleam
  Glowed and went through the wood.  Still I abode strong in a golden dream,
  Unrecaptured.
                 For I, I that had faith, knew that a face would glance
  One day, white in the dim woods, and a voice call, and a radiance
  Fill the grove, and the fire suddenly leap . . . and, in the heart of it,
  End of labouring, you!  Therefore I kept ready the altar, lit
  The flame, burning apart.
                             Face of my dreams vainly in vision white
  Gleaming down to me, lo! hopeless I rise now.  For about midnight
  Whispers grew through the wood suddenly, strange cries in the boughs above
  Grated, cries like a laugh.  Silent and black then through the sacred grove
  Great birds flew, as a dream, troubling the leaves, passing at length.
                                                                       I knew
  Long expected and long loved, that afar, God of the dim wood, you
  Somewhere lay, as a child sleeping, a child suddenly reft from mirth,
  White and wonderful yet, white in your youth, stretched upon foreign earth,
  God, immortal and dead!
                           Therefore I go; never to rest, or win
  Peace, and worship of you more, and the dumb wood and the shrine therein.

Experiments

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