Top 53 Quotes & Sayings by Rupert Brooke
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English poet Rupert Brooke.
Last updated on November 25, 2024.
A book may be compared to your neighbor: if it be good, it cannot last too long; if bad, you cannot get rid of it too early.
Cities, like cats, will reveal themselves at night.
Breathless, we flung us on a windy hill, Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass.
A kiss makes the heart young again and wipes out the years.
The cool kindliness of sheets, that soon smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss of blankets.
We always love those who admire us; we do not always love those whom we admire.
But there's wisdom in women, of more than they have known, And thoughts go blowing through them, are wiser than their own.
I thought when love for you died, I should die.
It's dead. Alone, most strangely, I live on.
Spend in pure converse our eternal day;
Think each in each, immediately wise;
Learn all we lacked before; hear, know, and say
What this tumultuous body now denies;
And feel, who have laid our groping hands away;
And see, no longer blinded by our eyes.
And in my flower-beds,
I think,
Smile the carnation
and the pink.
But only agony, and that has ending;
And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.
I have been so great a lover: filled my days So proudly with the splendour of Love's praise, The pain, the calm, and the astonishment, Desire illimitable, and silent content, And all dear names men use, to cheat despair, For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear Our hearts at random down the dark of life.
But the best I've known
Stays here, and changes, breaks, grows old, is blown
About the winds of the world, and fades from brains
Of living men, and dies.
And I shall find some girl perhaps, and a better one than you, With eyes as wise, but kindlier, and lips as soft, but true, and I dare say she will do.
They say that the Dead die not, but remain Near to the rich heirs of their grief and mirth. I think they ride the calm mid-heaven, as these, In wise majestic melancholy train, And watch the moon, and the still-raging seas, And men, coming and going on the earth.
Oh! death will find me, long before I tire
Of watching for you; and swing me suddenly
Into the shade and loneliness and mire
Of the last land!
Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear,
Each secret fishy hope or fear.
Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond;
But is there anything Beyond?
This life cannot be All, they swear,
For how unpleasant, if it were!
One may not doubt that, somehow, Good
Shall come of Water and of Mud;
And, sure, the reverent eye must see
A Purpose in Liquidity.
These laid the world away; poured out the red
Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be
Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene,
That men call age; and those who would have been,
Their sons, they gave, their immortality.
But somewhere, beyond Space and Time, is wetter water, slimier slime! And there (they trust) there swimmeth one who swam ere rivers were begun, immense of fishy form and mind, squamous omnipotent, and kind.
Down the blue night the unending columns press
In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow
I have a thousand images of you in an hour; all different and all coming back to the same. I think of you once against a sky line: and on the hill that Sunday morning. The light and the shadow and quietness and the rain and the wood. And you. Your arms and lips and hair and shoulders and voice - you.
Store up reservoirs of calm and content and draw on them at later moments when the source isn't there, but the need is very great.
Infinite hungers leap no more I in the chance swaying of your dress; and love has changed to kindliness.
I know what things are good: friendship and work and conversation. These I shall have.
One may not doubt that, somehow Good Shall come of Water and of Mud; And sure, the reverent eye must see A purpose in Liquidity.
All the little emptiness of love!
Stands the Church clock at ten to three? And is there honey still for tea?
Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead! There's none of these so lonely and poor of old, But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.
There's little comfort in the wise
Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond; But is there anything Beyond?
If I should die, think only this of me: that there's some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England.
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever 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.
War knows no power. Safe shall be my going,
Secretly armed against all death's endeavour;
Safe though all safety's lost; safe where men fall;
And if these poor limbs die, safest of all.
The worst of slaves is he whom passion rules.
Just now the lilac is in bloom
All before my little room.
And in that Heaven of all their wish, there shall be no more land, say fish
Oh! death will find me long before I tire of watching you.
Love is a breach in the walls, a broken gate, Love sells the proud heart's citadel to fate.
Hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
Canada is a live country - live, but not, like the States, kicking.
There are only three things in the world, one is to read poetry, another is to write poetry, and the best of all is to live poetry.
For Cambridge people rarely smile, Being urban, squat, and packed with guile.
.. . . would I were
In Grantchester, in Grantchester!
Proud, then, clear-eyed and laughing, go to greet Death as a friend!
Mud unto mud!--Death eddies near--
Not here the appointed End, not here!
But somewhere, beyond Space and Time,
Is wetter water, slimier slime!
I have need to busy my heart with quietude.
In your arms was still delight,
Quiet as a street at night;
And thoughts of you, I do remember,
Were green leaves in a darkened chamber,
Were dark clouds in a moonless sky.
I shall desire and I shall find
The best of my desires;
The autumn road, the mellow wind
That soothes the darkening shires.
And laughter, and inn-fires.
Yet, behind the night, Waits for the great unborn, somewhere afar, Some white tremendous daybreak.
Youth is stranger than fiction.
It's all a terrible tragedy. And yet, in it's details, it's great fun. And - apart from the tragedy - I've never felt happier or better in my life than in those days in Belgium.
Incredibly, inordinately, devastatingly, immortally, calamitously, hearteningly, adorably beautiful.
Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour,
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping.
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