I have known the most dear that is granted us here, More supreme than the gods know above, Like a star I was hurled through the sweet of the world, And the height and the light of it, Love. I have risen to the uttermost Heaven of Joy, I have sunk to the sheer Hell of Pain-- But--it's not going to happen again, my boy, It's not going to happen again. It's the very first word that poor Juliet heard From her Romeo over the Styx; And the Roman will tell Cleopatra in hell When she starts her immortal old tricks; What Paris was tellin' for good-bye to Helen When he bundled her into the train-- Oh, it's not going to happen again, old girl, It's not going to happen again. RUPERT BROOKE Château Lake Louise, Canada, 1913. _The Search for the Nightingale_ (_To S. S._) 1 Beside a stony, shallow stream I sat In a deep gully underneath a hill. I watched the water trickle down dark moss And shake the tiny boughs of maidenhair, And billow on the bodies of cold stone. And sculptured clear Upon the shoulder of that aerial peak Stood trees, the fragile skeletons of light, High in a bubble blown Of visionary stone. 2 Under that azurine transparent arch The hill, the rocks, the trees Were still and dreamless as the printed wood Black on the snowy page. It was the song of some diviner bird Than this still country knew, The words were twigs of burnt and blackened trees From which there trilled a voice, Shadowy and faint, as though it were the song The water carolled as it flowed along. 3 Lifting my head, I gazed upon the world, Carved in the breathless heat as in a gem, And watched the parroquets green-feathered fly Through crystal vacancy, and perch in trees That glittered in a thin, blue, haze-like dream, And the voice faded, though the water dinned Against the stones its dimming memory. And I ached then To hear that song burst out upon that scene, Startling an earth where it had never been. 4 And then I came unto an older world. The woods were damp, the sun Shone in a watery mist, and soon was gone; The trees were thick with leaves, heavy and old, The sky was grey, and blue, and like the sea Rolling with mists and shadowy veils of foam. I heard the roaring of an ancient wind Among the elms and in the tattered pines; Lighting pale hollows in the cloud-dark sky, A ghostly ship, the Moon, flew scudding by. 5