Rupert Brooke (1887–1915). Collected Poems. 1916.
VI. Other Poems
7. Song
ALL suddenly the wind comes soft,
And Spring is here again;
And the hawthorn quickens with buds of green,
And my heart with buds of pain.
My heart all Winter lay so numb, 5
The earth so dead and frore,
That I never thought the Spring would come,
Or my heart wake any more.
But Winter’s broken and earth has woken,
And the small birds cry again; 10
And the hawthorn hedge puts forth its buds,
And my heart puts forth its pain.
Rupert Brooke (1887–1915). Collected Poems. 1916.
II. 1908–1911
6.Mummia
AS those of old drank mummia
To fire their limbs of lead,
Making dead kings from Africa
Stand pandar to their bed;
Drunk on the dead, and medicined 5
With spiced imperial dust,
In a short night they reeled to find
Ten centuries of lust.
So I, from paint, stone, tale, and rhyme,
Stuffed love’s infinity, 10
And sucked all lovers of all time
To rarify ecstasy.
Helen’s the hair shuts out from me
Verona’s livid skies;
Gypsy the lips I press; and see 15
Two Antonys in your eyes.
The unheard invisible lovely dead
Lie with us in this place,
And ghostly hands above my head
Close face to straining face; 20
Their blood is wine along our limbs;
Their whispering voices wreathe
Savage forgotten drowsy hymns
Under the names we breathe;
Woven from their tomb, and one with it, 25
The night wherein we press;
Their thousand pitchy pyres have lit
Your flaming nakedness.
For the uttermost years have cried and clung
To kiss your mouth to mine; 30
And hair long dust was caught, was flung,
Hand shaken to hand divine,
And Life has fired, and Death not shaded,
All Time’s uncounted bliss,
And the height o’ the world has flamed and faded, 35
Love, that our love be this!
Carl Sandburg (1878–1967). Smoke and Steel. 1922.
VIII. Circles of Doors
1. Circles of doors
I LOVE him, I love him, ran the patter of her lips
And she formed his name on her tongue and sang
And she sent him word she loved him so much,
So much, and death was nothing; work, art, home,
All was nothing if her love for him was not first 5
Of all; the patter of her lips ran, I love him,
I love him; and he knew the doors that opened
Into doors and more doors, no end of doors,
And full length mirrors doubling and tripling
The apparitions of doors: circling corridors of 10
Looking glasses and doors, some with knobs, some
With no knobs, some opening slow to a heavy push,
And some jumping open at a touch and a hello.
And he knew if he so wished he could follow her
Swift running through circles of doors, hearing 15
Sometimes her whisper, I love him, I love him,
And sometimes only a high chaser of laughter
Somewhere five or ten doors ahead or five or ten
Doors behind, or chittering h-st, h-st, among corners
Of the tall full-length dusty looking glasses. 20
I love, I love, I love, she sang short and quick in
High thin beaten soprano and he knew the meanings,
The high chaser of laughter, the doors on doors
And the looking glasses, the room to room hunt,
The ends opening into new ends always. 25
Carl Sandburg (1878–1967). Smoke and Steel. 1922.
VII. Passports
7. Home thoughts
THE SEA rocks have a green moss.
The pine rocks have red berries.
I have memories of you.
Speak to me of how you miss me.
Tell me the hours go long and slow. 5
Speak to me of the drag on your heart,
The iron drag of the long days.
I know hours empty as a beggar’s tin cup on a rainy day, empty as a soldier’s sleeve with an arm lost.
Speak to me …
Carl Sandburg (1878–1967). Chicago Poems. 1916.
101. I sang
I SANG to you and the moon
But only the moon remembers.
I sang
O reckless free-hearted
free-throated rythms,
5
Even the moon remembers them
And is kind to me.
Carl Sandburg (1878–1967). Chicago Poems. 1916.
94. Shirt
I REMEMBER once I ran after you and tagged the fluttering shirt of you in the wind.
Once many days ago I drank a glassful of something and the picture of you shivered and slid on top of the stuff.
And again it was nobody else but you I heard in the singing voice of a careless humming woman.
One night when I sat with chums telling stories at a bonfire flickering red embers, in a language its own talking to a spread of white stars:
It was you that slunk laughing
5
in the clumsy staggering shadows.
Broken answers of remembrance let me know you are alive with a peering phantom face behind a doorway somewhere in the city’s push and fury
Or under a pack of moss and leaves waiting in silence under a twist of oaken arms ready as ever to run away again when I tag the fluttering shirt of you.
