#rupert brooke

[nobeerreviews]

Down the blue night the unending columns press

In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow

-- Rupert Brooke

(Bistrița, Romania)

[ashintheairlikesnow]

FOUND THIS IN A RANDOM USED BOOKSTORE I STOPPED IN ON A WHIM IT IS AN ORIGINAL 1915 EDITION PUBLISHED JUST AFTER HE WAS KIA DURING WWI I AM SILENTLY SCREAMING

[pearlsoflongago]

Quietude

Van Gogh, Brooke, and Other Purveyors of Wisdom

Cornfield with Crows by Vincent van Gogh

Youth in Age

ONCE I was part of the music I heard On the boughs or sweet between earth and sky; For joy of the beating of wings on high My heart shot into the breast of the bird.

I hear it now and I see it fly, And a life in wrinkles again is stirred; My heart shoots into the breast of the bird, As it will for sheer love till the last long sigh.

—George Meredith

Intérieur blanc/White Interior by Pierre Bonnard

The Long Small Room

THE long small room that showed willows in the west Narrowed up to the end the fireplace filled, Although not wide. I liked it. No one guessed What need or accident made them so build. Only the moon, the mouse, and the sparrow peeped In from the ivy round the casement thick. Of all they saw and heard there they shall keep The tale for the old ivy and older brick. When I look back I am like moon, sparrow, and mouse That witnessed what they could never understand Or alter or prevent in the dark house. One thing remains the same—this is my right hand Crawling crab-like over the clean white page, Resting awhile each morning on the pillow, Then once more starting to crawl on towards age. The hundred last leaves stream upon the willow.

—Edward Thomas

Sleeping Man with a Book by Yehuda Pen

The Busy Heart

NOW that we've done our best and worst, and parted, I would fill my mind with thoughts that will not rend. (O heart, I do not dare go empty-hearted) I'll think of Love in books, Love without end; Women with child, content; and old men sleeping; And wet strong ploughlands, scarred for certain grain; And babes that weep, and so forget their weeping; And the young heavens, forgetful after rain; And evening hush, broken by homing wings; And Song's nobility, and Wisdom holy, That live, we dead. I would think of a thousand things, Lovely and lovable, and taste them slowly, One after one, like tasting a sweet food. I have need to busy my heart with quietude.

—Rupert Brooke

Rain by Vincent van Gogh

[madnessofmen]

[beforevenice]

I have need to busy my heart with quietude.

// Rupert Brooke, The busy heart

[edwardian-girl-next-door]

~ Rupert Brooke, "A Memory" (1913)

via poets.org

text id after cut-off

[text id: Rupert Brooke, "A Memory"

Somewhile before the dawn I rose, and stept     Softly along the dim way to your room     And found you sleeping in the quiet gloom, And holiness about you as you slept. I knelt there; till your waking fingers crept     About my head, and held it. I had rest     Unhoped this side of Heaven, beneath your breast. I knelt a long time, still; nor even wept.

It was great wrong you did me; and for gain Or that poor moment’s kindliness, and ease, and sleepy mother-comfort!                                              Child, you know How easily love leaps out to dreams like these, Who has seen them true.    And love that’s wakened so Takes all too long to lay asleep again.

/end id]

[diioonysus]

beautiful men from the past (imo)

[to-end-all-wars]

Oh to be someone's Sailor-Boy.

[charlesemersonwinchesteriii]

Rupert Brooke (3 August 1887 – 23 April 1915) was an English poet known for the idealistic war sonnets he wrote during the First World War. He and his poetry became national symbols of the glories of war and patriotic sacrifice, used as propaganda by the likes of Winston Churchill and Elisabeth II—though the particular sonnet Klinger recites in this scene, “The Hill”, has a more ambivalent tone.

He was also bisexual, and was described by author Margaret Anderson as having “a girl’s beauty”.

Doubtless, of course, the script’s choice of author here had nothing to do with queerness and everything to do with the sad and funny irony of Klinger, of all people, enthusiastically reading poetry that romanticizes dying in battle. Brooke himself died in World War I, age 27—in an army hospital, from an infected mosquito bite. 

But as always with this show, a queer reading is readily available if you want one. And I do want one! I love you, bitrans girlboy.

(A final bit of trivia: if you look closely, the book in this scene is not actually poetry at all. It’s the complete plays of Bernard Shaw.)

[woundofchrist]

[love-shall-not]

[internatlvelvet]

Noel Olivier, Maitland Radford, Virginia Woolf (née Stephen), Rupert Brooke

August 1911

[polarpics]

Terra Novans in the First World War (from top left clockwise: Silas, Meares, Priestley, Nelson + Rupert Brooke, Deb)

[victoriancryptid]

i’m going to hell for making this meme

[n3wy0rkd011]

how come all the significant writers ever all left us on the same date?

[corallapis]

Excerpt from a letter by Eddie Marsh to Rupert Brooke, May 16th 1913:

Dearest Rupert. There is nothing in the world duller than a travel letter written by me — but I expect this is nearly my last chance of catching you before you start So I must send you a few last words. Do take care of your precious self + have a glorious time, to make up to me for your not being in England ! + try not to stay away too long. I shall feel the want of you.