These hearts were woven of human joys and cares. Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth. The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs, And sunset, and the colours of the earth. These had seen movement, and heard music; known Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended; Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone; Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended. There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after, Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance, A width, a shining peace, under the night. V. The Soldier If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England’s breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. 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. PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY BILLING AND SONS, LIMITED GUILDFORD AND ESHER * * * * * * * * *Poems* *by Rupert Brooke* (Originally published in 1911) _Twenty-eighth Impression_ 3s. 6d. _net_ "The volume of ’Poems’ published in 1911, which contains work written as early as 1905, when he was eighteen, shows an art curiously personal, skilful, deliberate. It shows, too, an intellectual deftness altogether unexpected in so young a poet, and it shows finally, not always but often, an indifference to the normal material upon which poets good and bad are apt to work from the outset, and in the shaping of which ultimately comes all poetry that is memorable. Nearly every page is interesting on account of its art and intellectual deftness, qualities that we should not expect to be marked.... "... Even in the poems where most we feel the lack of emotional truth there is a beauty of word that made the book full of the most exciting promise. Already, too there was in certain poems assurance against the danger that this intellectual constraint might degenerate into virtuosity."—From "RUPERT BROOKE," by John Drinkwater, in the _Contemporary Review_, December 1915. *** The poems on pp. 7-38 of _Selected Poems_ are taken from the above volume.