Sunday WW1 Poet...

The theme for this month's WW1 poetry 

is

Rupert Brooke

1887 - 1915

(iii) The Dead

Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!

   There's none of these so lonely and poor of old,

   But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.

These laid the world away; poured out the red

Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be

   Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene,

   That men call age; and those who would have been,

Their sons, they gave, their immortality.

Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth,

   Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain.

Honour has come back, as a king, to earth,

   And paid his subjects with a royal wage;

And Nobleness walks in our ways again;

   And we have come into our heritage.

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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