"We are Earth's best, that learnt her lesson here. Life is our cry. We have kept the faith!" we said; "We shall go down with unreluctant tread Rose-crowned into the darkness!" ... Proud we were, And laughed, that had such brave true things to say. --And then you suddenly cried, and turned away. Everything in it--with the exception of "kissed the lovely grass," which might easily be spared--is fine; "with unreluctant tread Rose-crowned into the darkness!" is vivid with beauty; and when the simple dignity of "such brave true things to say" has swung you to its great height, the drop in that sudden last line comes with the most moving wistfulness. There are several poems, too long to quote here, which show Mr. Brooke's affinity with the outdoors; but perhaps even five lines from one of them will suggest it: Then from the sad west turning wearily, I saw the pines against the white north sky, Very beautiful, and still, and bending over Their sharp black heads against a quiet sky And there was peace in them.... Not long ago I asked a poet in whose judgment I have a profound belief, to read these poems of Rupert Brooke's and give me his opinion. After looking at two or three he said he was afraid he wasn't going to like them, but the next day he reported that he wished to retract, making the magnificent concession that "_some_ of Brooke's moods are healthy!" Of course there are a number of things in this volume that can easily be interpreted as unhealthy or repulsive, like the _Wagner_: Creeps in half wanton, half asleep, One with a fat wide hairless face. He likes love music that is cheap; Likes women in a crowded place; And wants to hear the noise they're making. His heavy eyelids droop half-over, Great pouches swing beneath his eyes. He listens, thinks himself the lover, Heaves from his stomach wheezy sighs; He likes to feel his heart's a-breaking. The music swells. His gross legs quiver. His little lips are bright with slime. The music swells. The women shiver, And all the while, in perfect time His pendulous stomach hangs a-shaking. But it seems something more than that to me. As an attack on German emotionalism--however unjustly, from my point of view, through Wagner--the poem struck me as an exercise of extraordinary cleverness. I don't know that anyone has ever said so effectively the things that ought be said about that type of emotion which feeds not upon life but, inversely, upon emotion. Mr. Brooke's pictures have much of the quality of Böcklin's. That first sonnet can be imagined in the same tone values as Böcklin's wonderful _Isle of the Dead_, and the closing lines of _Victory_ need the same medium: