Rupert Brooke

Waikiki

Warm perfumes like a breath from vine and tree
   Drift down the darkness.  Plangent, hidden from eyes
   Somewhere an 'eukaleli’ thrills and cries
  And stabs with pain the night’s brown savagery.
  And dark scents whisper; and dim waves creep to me,
   Gleam like a woman’s hair, stretch out, and rise;
   And new stars burn into the ancient skies,
  Over the murmurous soft Hawaian sea.
 
  And I recall, lose, grasp, forget again,
   And still remember, a tale I have heard, or known,
  An empty tale, of idleness and pain,
   Of two that loved —or did not love —and one
  Whose perplexed heart did evil, foolishly,
  A long while since, and by some other sea.

Waikiki, 1913

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