Brooke, Rupert : (1887-1915) Rupert Chawner or Chaucer; he went to a prep school in Rugby at Hillbrow & Rugby. His thesis John Webster & the Elizabethan Drama won him a scholarship to King’s College, Cambridge. His first collection of poems was published in 1911. Like his contemporaries in the pre-war poetry scene, he was preoccupied with trying to shake off the long Victorian hangover. At the outbreak of the War, Rupert was commissioned into the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve as a temporary Sub-Lieutenant. He died on 23 April 1915 on a French hospital ship while on his way to the landing at Gallipoli – attended throughout by the Prime Minister’s son, his comrade Arthur. He was buried in an olive grove on Skyros. His most famous collection of poetry, containing all five of his wartime sonnets, 1914 & Other Poems, was published in May 1915. The most famous of them remains “The Soldier” (originally entitled “The Recruit”). Naturally, its opening lines became the best remembered, hence its most quoted lines:
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.
... that they are soldiers of Christ and Mary, defenders of the Faith, and that dying in the French way means dying in the Christian way. It is Christ who loves the French.” 408 And the English poet Rupert Brooke wrote on the occasion: “Now, God be thanked who has matched us with His hour …” Nowhere was the enthusiasm greater than in Germany, convinced that, by way of a lightning-quick war, God was clearing ...
... daughter had about the young poets who went to war in 1914-1918 and got killed. I personally think Rupert Brooke had the greatest promise, though none of his once-famous sonnets had the grim heart-break of Owen's "Anthem for Doomed Youth", which some critics rank as one of the finest in the English language. Brooke was more inclined to be romantically sentimental. But he had a gift of crystallised phrase,... and heard music; known Slumber and waking; loved, gone proudly friended; Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone; Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended. Here Brooke is at his level of normal felicity of phrase, semi-romantic semi-sentimental, with two or three outstanding expressions: "washed marvellously with sorrow", "gone proudly friended", "sat alone". Then ...
... The simplicity of pathos here could hardly be bettered. But a lesser hand would have spoilt the feeling by either too emptily brief a speech or a speech attenuated by being drawn out. Thus Rupert Brooke in a sonnet which as a whole is a success and which has a splendidly phanopoeic sestet comes quite near to failure in four lines terminating the octave. He also is talking about the dead — the soldiers... fashion — say, "gone proud of friends" — the last line would close better with a finality of four stresses of varying weight, with the last stress the strongest in the phrase: "All this now ends." Brooke's quatrain is less true pathos than a kind of delicate Page 278 pathostication, the semi-artificial though not quite unskilful stimulation of sad thoughts. Logopoeia, to be successful ...
... y, the emotion-aspect, of language. If we wish to exemplify at more length the incarnative-ness through the subtle body, we cannot do better than start with the sestet of a sonnet of Rupert Brooke's, which when detached from the much inferior octave can stand as an independent piece at once of Nature-evocation and of visionary symbolism: There are waters blown by changing winds to... Fixed with gold panel and opalescent hinge A gate of dreams ajar on mystery's verge. What is it that divides this passage from Brooke's sestet? Broadly one may observe: "Something in the manner of the sight, the mode of the rhythm. In Brooke the sight draws natural phenomena more or less as they are — at least through most of the lines — into an inner significance. Except for the tinge... beyond verbal expression..." An interesting point for comparison with the Brooke-sestet is provided by the occurrence of a few common words in the two quotations. Sri Aurobindo has spoken of his "gesture" being so supported by the rest of the line as to be no mere metaphor but a thing actually done. In Brooke we have "Frost, with a gesture..." It is vivid but still merely metaphorical. Similarly ...
... it is just one mode of it: there are various other modes like Wordsworth's animistic and pantheistic Nature-love, Keats's happy self-identification with every kind of natural energy and form, Rupert Brooke's intimate response of joy to the touch of objects, the craftsman's-love of moulding matter, etc. Thirdly, the senses are not, in their origin, merely physical powers: the life of the Spirit is a ...
... -Edwardian-early-Georgian. The defect of that poetry is that it has a fullness of language which fails to go home—things that ought to be very fine, but miss being so; so much of the poetry of Rupert Brooke as I have seen, for instance, always gives me that impression. In our own language I might say that it is an inspiration which tries to come from the higher mind but only succeeds in inflating the... p² etc. Before that there were Hopkins and Flecker and others and before that Meredith and Hardy and Francis Thompson. You can tackle any of them you can lay your hands on in the library. Watson and Brooke and other Edwardians and Georgians would not be good for you. 16 October 1938 Originality is all right, but if you become so original that nobody can follow you and all fall behind gasping for ...
... power of phrase, and rhythms that are not common or obvious and are subtly effective." (8.5.32) Radha's Rebuke to the Worldly-minded [I wrote: "This poem almost out-Brookes Rupert Brooke, at two or three places, in distant rhyming. I hope this defect is not unforgivable. Has it, otherwise, inspiration enough?"] "Yes, it is a good poem." (3 6.32) A Freudian's Midnight ...
... enthusiastically, into the abyss. Everyone knows of the young men … who hailed the outbreak of the First World War like people who have fallen in love.” 16 A striking testimony to these words are Rupert Brooke’s lines, quoted in Voices of the Great War: Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour, And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping, With hand made sure, clear eye, and ...
... Taken ensemble, Chattopadhyaya's accomplishment in the sonnet-medium — before Sri Aurobindo's series of sonnets in 1939 — is perhaps the most notable in our century by its sustained poetry. Rupert Brooke has been awarded the palm by English critics but his work is too scarce and the highest inspiration peeps out just once or twice, whereas Chattopadhyaya has in almost every sonnet some genuine flash ...
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