Sunday WW1 Poet....

The theme for this month's WW1 poetry 

is

Rupert Brooke

1887 - 1915

The Sonnets

(i) Peace

Now, God be thanked Who has watched us with His hour,

And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,

With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,

To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,

Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary,

Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move,

And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,

And all the little emptiness of love!

Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,

Where there's no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,

Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;

Nothing to shake the laughing heart's long peace there

But only agony, and that has ending;

And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.

Rupert Brooke wrote this series of poems entitled The Sonnets in the autumn of 1914 following the outbreak of the First World War.

He died from an infected mosquito bite in April 1915 on a French hospital ship on his way to Gallipoli and is buried in an olive grove on Skyros in Greece.



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