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Victory

By Rupert Brooke

Topics: classic

All night the ways of Heaven were desolate,     Long roads across a gleaming empty sky.     Outcast and doomed and driven, you and I,     Alone, serene beyond all love or hate,     Terror or triumph, were content to wait,     We, silent and all-knowing. Suddenly     Swept through the heaven low-crouching from on high,     One horseman, downward to the earth's low gate.     Oh, perfect from the ultimate height of living,     Lightly we turned, through wet woods blossom-hung,     Into the open. Down the supernal roads,     With plumes a-tossing, purple flags far flung,     Rank upon rank, unbridled, unforgiving,     Thundered the black battalions of the Gods.

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"All night the ways of Heaven were desolate,..."

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Author:Rupert Brooke

"All night the ways of Heaven were desolate,..." 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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