Five Songs of Rupert Brooke

When colour goes home into the eyes,
  And lights that shine are shut again
With dancing girls and sweet birds' cries
  Behind the gateways of the brain;
And that no-place which gave them birth, shall close
The rainbow and the rose: -- 
  
Still may Time hold some golden space
  Where I'll unpack that scented store
Of song and flower and sky and face,
  And count, and touch, and turn them o'er,
Musing upon them; as a mother, who
Has watched her children all the rich day through
Sits, quiet-handed, in the fading light,
When children sleep, ere night.

"Oh love is fair, and love is rare;" my dear one she said,
"But love goes lightly over." I bowed her foolish head,
And kissed her hair and laughed at her. Such a child was she;
So new to love, so true to love, and she spoke so bitterly.
  
But there's wisdom in women, of more than they have known,
And thoughts go blowing through them, are wiser than their own,
Or how should my dear one, being ignorant and young,
Have cried on love so bitterly, with so true a tongue?

Today I have been happy. All the day
  I held the memory of you, and wove
Its laughter with the dancing light o' the spray,
  And sowed the sky with tiny clouds of love,
And sent you following the white waves of sea,
  And crowned your head with fancies, nothing worth,
Stray buds from that old dust of misery,
  Being glad with a new foolish quiet mirth.
  
So lightly I played with those dark memories,
Just as a child, beneath the summer skies,
  Plays hour by hour with a strange shining stone,
For which (he knows not) towns were fire of old,
  And love has been betrayed, and murder done,
And great kings turned to a little bitter mould.

All suddenly the wind comes soft,
  And Spring is here again;
And the hawthorn quickens with buds of green
  And my heart with buds of pain.

My heart all Winter lay so numb,
  The earth so dead and frore,
That I never thought the Spring would come,
  Or my heart wake any more.

But Winter's broken and earth has woken
  And the small birds cry again.
And the hawthorn hedge puts forth its buds,
  And my heart puts forth its pain.

Down the blue night th'unending columns press
in noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow,
now tread the far south, or lift rounds of snow
up to the white moon's hidden loveliness.
Some pause in their grave wandering, comradeless,
and turn with profound gesture vague and slow,
as who would pray good for the world, but know
their benediction empty as they bless.
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.