The Poems Of Rupert Brooke

"When 'The Soldier' is read alongside his other poems one realizes what a huge loss his early death in war represents." These ecstatic poems form the heritage and chronicle of a handsome British youth who died in the Great War. Rupert Chawner/Chaucer Brooke (1887-1915), was an English poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the First World War especially 'The Soldier', however, he never experienced combat at first hand. He was also known for his boyish good looks. Brooke toured the United States and Canada to write travel diaries for the Westminster Gazette. Amongst his other works are: The Bastille (1905), Poems (1911), The South Seas (1914), 1914 and Other Poems (1915), Lithuania (1915), The Collected Poems (1915/1918) and Letters from America (1916). Download now and start reading these classic poems today!

This volume reprints Brooke's complete oeuvre, from the early lyric poems to those written shortly before his death: "Tiare Tahiti," "The Great Lover," "The Dead," "The Soldier," many others.

Rupert Brooke was both fair to see and winning in his ways. There was at the first contact both bloom and charm; and most of all there was life. To use the word his friends describe him by, he was "vivid". This vitality, though manifold in expression, is felt primarily in his sensations — surprise mingled with delight — "One after one, like tasting a sweet food." This is life's "first fine rapture". It makes him patient to name over those myriad things each of which seems like a fresh discovery curious but potent, and above all common, that he "loved", — he the "Great Lover". Lover of what, then? Why, of "White plates and cups clean-gleaming, Ringed with blue lines," — and the like, through thirty lines of exquisite words; and he is captivated by the multiple brevity of these vignettes of sense, keen, momentary, ecstatic with the morning dip of youth in the wonderful stream. The poem is a catalogue of vital sensations and "dear names" as well. "All these have been my loves."