\nAll before my little room;
\nAnd in my flower-beds, I think,
\nSmile the carnation and the pink;
\nAnd down the borders, well I know,
\nThe poppy and the pansy blow . . .
\nOh! there the chestnuts, summer through,
\nBeside the river make for you
\nA tunnel of green gloom, and sleep
\nDeeply above; and green and deep
\nThe stream mysterious glides beneath,
\nGreen as a dream and deep as death.
\n\u2014 Oh, damn! I know it! and I know
\nHow the May fields all golden show,
\nAnd when the day is young and sweet,
\nGild gloriously the bare feet
\nThat run to bathe . . .
\n………………………<\/span>‘Du lieber Gott!’<\/p>\n
Here am I, sweating, sick, and hot, \u03b5\u03b9\u03b8\u03b5 \u03b3\u03b5\u03bd\u03bf\u03b9\u03bc\u03b7\u03bd . . . would I were God! I will pack, and take a train, Ah God! to see the branches stir .<\/span><\/p>\n by Rupert Brooke<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n I chose this poem mainly because I adapted the first two lines to accompany my wisteria photos over the weekend, here<\/a> and here<\/a>, and it ocurred to me that for a poem to stick in one’s memory and supply the mot juste<\/em> that illustrates a photo or an event, is a real test of its endurance.<\/p>\n At any rate, I had not read the poem since high school but I hope you will share my enjoyment in re-reading it now.<\/p>\n Since it is also exactly a century since the poem was written—in the northern hemisphere spring of that year, just as it is our southern hemisphere spring now—I felt it was doubly appropriate to feature it as a Tuesday Poem.<\/p>\n For a full bio of Rupert Brooke, his brief life and poetry, the Poetry Foundation’s profile is available Here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n —<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Old Vicarage, Grantchester (Cafe des Westens, Berlin, May 1912) Just now the lilac is in bloom, All before my little room; And in my flower-beds, I think, Smile the carnation and the pink; And down the borders, well I know, The poppy and the pansy blow . . . Oh! there the chestnuts, summer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17001"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17020,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17001\/revisions\/17020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAnd there the shadowed waters fresh
\nLean up to embrace the naked flesh.
\nTemperamentvoll German Jews
\nDrink beer around; \u2014 and THERE the dews
\nAre soft beneath a morn of gold.
\nHere tulips bloom as they are told;
\nUnkempt about those hedges blows
\nAn English unofficial rose;
\nAnd there the unregulated sun
\nSlopes down to rest when day is done,
\nAnd wakes a vague unpunctual star,
\nA slippered Hesper; and there are
\nMeads towards Haslingfield and Coton
\nWhere das Betreten’s<\/em> not verboten<\/em>.<\/p>\n
\nIn Grantchester, in Grantchester! \u2014
\nSome, it may be, can get in touch
\nWith Nature there, or Earth, or such.
\nAnd clever modern men have seen
\nA Faun a-peeping through the green,
\nAnd felt the Classics were not dead,
\nTo glimpse a Naiad’s reedy head,
\nOr hear the Goat-foot piping low: . . .
\nBut these are things I do not know.
\nI only know that you may lie
\nDay long and watch the Cambridge sky,
\nAnd, flower-lulled in sleepy grass,
\nHear the cool lapse of hours pass,
\nUntil the centuries blend and blur
\nIn Grantchester, in Grantchester. . . .
\nStill in the dawnlit waters cool
\nHis ghostly Lordship swims his pool,
\nAnd tries the strokes, essays the tricks,
\nLong learnt on Hellespont, or Styx.
\nDan Chaucer hears his river still
\nChatter beneath a phantom mill.
\nTennyson notes, with studious eye,
\nHow Cambridge waters hurry by . . .
\nAnd in that garden, black and white,
\nCreep whispers through the grass all night;
\nAnd spectral dance, before the dawn,
\nA hundred Vicars down the lawn;
\nCurates, long dust, will come and go
\nOn lissom, clerical, printless toe;
\nAnd oft between the boughs is seen
\nThe sly shade of a Rural Dean . . .
\nTill, at a shiver in the skies,
\nVanishing with Satanic cries,
\nThe prim ecclesiastic rout
\nLeaves but a startled sleeper-out,
\nGrey heavens, the first bird’s drowsy calls,
\nThe falling house that never falls.<\/p>\n
\nAnd get me to England once again!
\nFor England’s the one land, I know,
\nWhere men with Splendid Hearts may go;
\nAnd Cambridgeshire, of all England,
\nThe shire for Men who Understand;
\nAnd of THAT district I prefer
\nThe lovely hamlet Grantchester.
\nFor Cambridge people rarely smile,
\nBeing urban, squat, and packed with guile;
\nAnd Royston men in the far South
\nAre black and fierce and strange of mouth;
\nAt Over they fling oaths at one,
\nAnd worse than oaths at Trumpington,
\nAnd Ditton girls are mean and dirty,
\nAnd there’s none in Harston under thirty,
\nAnd folks in Shelford and those parts
\nHave twisted lips and twisted hearts,
\nAnd Barton men make Cockney rhymes,
\nAnd Coton’s full of nameless crimes,
\nAnd things are done you’d not believe
\nAt Madingley on Christmas Eve.
\nStrong men have run for miles and miles,
\nWhen one from Cherry Hinton smiles;
\nStrong men have blanched, and shot their wives,
\nRather than send them to St. Ives;
\nStrong men have cried like babes, bydam,
\nTo hear what happened at Babraham.
\nBut Grantchester! ah, Grantchester!
\nThere’s peace and holy quiet there,
\nGreat clouds along pacific skies,
\nAnd men and women with straight eyes,
\nLithe children lovelier than a dream,
\nA bosky wood, a slumbrous stream,
\nAnd little kindly winds that creep
\nRound twilight corners, half asleep.
\nIn Grantchester their skins are white;
\nThey bathe by day, they bathe by night;
\nThe women there do all they ought;
\nThe men observe the Rules of Thought.
\nThey love the Good; they worship Truth;
\nThey laugh uproariously in youth;
\n(And when they get to feeling old,
\nThey up and shoot themselves, I’m told) . . .<\/p>\n
\nAcross the moon at Grantchester!
\nTo smell the thrilling-sweet and rotten
\nUnforgettable, unforgotten
\nRiver-smell, and hear the breeze
\nSobbing in the little trees.
\nSay, do the elm-clumps greatly stand
\nStill guardians of that holy land?
\nThe chestnuts shade, in reverend dream,
\nThe yet unacademic stream?
\nIs dawn a secret shy and cold
\nAnadyomene, silver-gold?
\nAnd sunset still a golden sea
\nFrom Haslingfield to Madingley?
\nAnd after, ere the night is born,
\nDo hares come out about the corn?
\nOh, is the water sweet and cool,
\nGentle and brown, above the pool?
\nAnd laughs the immortal river still
\nUnder the mill, under the mill?
\nSay, is there Beauty yet to find?
\nAnd Certainty? and Quiet kind?
\nDeep meadows yet, for to forget
\nThe lies, and truths, and pain? . . . oh! yet
\nStands the Church clock at ten to three?
\nAnd is there honey still for tea?<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/TuesPoem.jpg\" "\\"TuesPoem\\"")
<\/a>To read the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub\u2014and link to other Tuesday Poets posting around NZ and the world\u2014either click here<\/a> or on the Quill icon in the sidebar.<\/p>\n