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Hauntings

By Rupert Brooke

Topics: classic

In the grey tumult of these after years     Oft silence falls; the incessant wranglers part;     And less-than-echoes of remembered tears     Hush all the loud confusion of the heart;     And a shade, through the toss'd ranks of mirth and crying     Hungers, and pains, and each dull passionate mood,     Quite lost, and all but all forgot, undying,     Comes back the ecstasy of your quietude.     So a poor ghost, beside his misty streams,     Is haunted by strange doubts, evasive dreams,     Hints of a pre-Lethean life, of men,     Stars, rocks, and flesh, things unintelligible,     And light on waving grass, he knows not when,     And feet that ran, but where, he cannot tell.

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"In the grey tumult of these after years..."

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Author:Rupert Brooke

"In the grey tumult of these after years..." 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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