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Peace

By Rupert Brooke

Topics: classic

Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour,     And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,     With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,     To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,     Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary,     Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move,     And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,     And all the little emptiness of love!     Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,     Where there's no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,     Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;     Nothing to shake the laughing heart's long peace there     But only agony, and that has ending;     And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.

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"Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour,..."

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Author:Rupert Brooke

"Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His ho..." 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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