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Dead Men's Love

By Rupert Brooke

Topics: classic

There was a damned successful Poet;     There was a Woman like the Sun.     And they were dead. They did not know it.     They did not know their time was done.     They did not know his hymns     Were silence; and her limbs,     That had served Love so well,     Dust, and a filthy smell.     And so one day, as ever of old,     Hands out, they hurried, knee to knee;     On fire to cling and kiss and hold     And, in the other's eyes, to see     Each his own tiny face,     And in that long embrace     Feel lip and breast grow warm     To breast and lip and arm.     So knee to knee they sped again,     And laugh to laugh they ran, I'm told,     Across the streets of Hell . . .      And then     They suddenly felt the wind blow cold,     And knew, so closely pressed,     Chill air on lip and breast,     And, with a sick surprise,     The emptiness of eyes.

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"There was a damned successful Poet;..." by Rupert Brooke

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"The Text is taken from Percy's Reliques (1765), vol. i. p. 71, 'given from two MS. copies, transmitted from Scotland.' Herd had a very similar bal"

Rupert Brooke

About Rupert Brooke

Rupert Brooke (1887–1915) was an English war poet whose sonnets—including "The Soldier" ("If I should die, think only this of me")—idealized the sacrifice of war. He died of sepsis en route to Gallipoli and became a symbol of the lost generation of WWI.

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