The Going:

(To The Memory of Rupert Brooke)

He's gone.
I do not understand.
I only know
That as he turned to go
And waved his hand
In his young eyes a sudden glory shone:
And I was dazzled by a sunset glow,


A Lament

We who are left, how shall we look again
Happily on the sun, or feel the rain,
Without remembering how they who went
Ungrudgingly, and spent
Their all for us, loved, too, the sun and rain?

A bird upon the rain-wet lilac sings--
But we, how shall we turn to little things
And listen to the birds and winds and streams
Made holy by their dreams,
Nor feel the heartbreak in the heart of things?

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (1878-1962)



Gibson was a contemporary of Robert Frost and was a well known poet before the Great War. Rupert Brooke was a young man well known by Henry James and Yates and Virginia Woolf. He served in the military with Churchill's son in WWI. As is obvious, Brooke died during the war. Biographical information and more World War I poetry found HERE at the BYU library. Many thanks to them for this superb resource. Accessed 11/14/08.