"Love is a flame;--we have beaconed the world's night. A city:--and we have built it, these and I. An emperor:--we have taught the world to die." The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. And again in that same great poem: "--Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake, And give what's left of love again, and make New friends, now strangers...." The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. THE GOSPEL OF LOVE FOR ONE'S COUNTRY And who shall say where the line of cleavage is between that love which clings to Friends; and that greater or conjugal love which moulds man and woman into one; and love for children, blood of one's blood, and love of country; and love of God? I say that those who are truly the great Lovers of the world love all of these and that not one is omitted. At least the truly great Lovers have the capacity for love of all these types. I have found no expression of paternal love in Brooke, for he had not come to that great experience of life before Death claimed him. And because Death robbed him of that experience Death robbed us of a rare interpretation of that special type of Love. But of all these other types which I have mentioned we have a clear expression in the slender volume of poems that he left us as our heritage from his estate. And, since we have already read one beautiful expression of this love for his country in the opening paragraphs of this chapter, we will add here another stanza of that noble expression of his love for old England. "And think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven." The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. What a voice for the times! What a voice for America! Would that some American Brooke might arise to sing this same deep song. A GOSPEL OF THE GODS Rupert Brooke had a wide range of interests as indeed any great Lover of Life and living must have. He expressed the hopelessness of the heathen gods in a poem which he called "On the Death of Smet-Smet, the Hippopotomus-Goddess" in lines that fairly sparkle with the electricity of destruction and sarcasm: "She was wrinkled and huge and hideous? She was our Mother. She was lustful and lewd?--but a God; we had none other. In the day She was hidden and dumb, but at nightfall moaned in the shade; We shuddered and gave Her Her will in the darkness; we were afraid. (The People without) "She sent us pain, And we bowed before Her; She smiled again And bade us adore Her. She solaced our woe And soothed our sighing; And what shall we do Now God is dying?" The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke.