Rupert Brooke(1887–1915)
From The Old Vicarage, Grantchester
(Cafe des Westens, Berlin, May1912)
Just now the lilac is in bloom,
All before my little room;
And in my flower-beds, I think,
Smile the carnation and the pink;
And down the borders, well I know,
The poppy and the pansy blow . . .
Oh! there the chestnuts, summer through,
Beside the river make for you
A tunnel of green gloom, and sleep
Deeply above; and green and deep
The stream mysterious glides beneath,
Green as a dream and deep as death.
—Oh, damn! I know it! and I know
How the May fields all golden show,
And when the day is young and sweet,
Gild gloriously the bare feet
That run to bathe . . .
Du lieber Gott!3
Here am I, sweating, sick, and hot,
And there the shadowed waters fresh
Lean up to embrace the naked flesh.
Temperamentvoll4 German Jews
Drink beer around;—and there the dews
Are soft beneath a morn of gold.
Here tulips bloom as they are told;
Unkempt about those hedges blows
An English unofficial rose;
And there the unregulated sun
Slopes down to rest when day is done,
And wakes a vague unpunctual star,
A slippered Hesper; and there areevening star (Venus)
Meads 0 towards Haslingfield and Cotonmeadows
Where das Betreten's not verboten.5
ei'Be y£voi[ir\v6 . . . would I were
In Grantchester, in Grantchester!—
Some, it may be, can get in touch
With Nature there, or Earth, or such.
And clever modern men have seen
A Faun a-peeping through the green,
And felt the Classics were not dead,
To glimpse a Naiad's reedy head,
Or hear the Goat-foot7 piping low: . . .
But these are things I do not know.
I only know that you may lie
Day-long and watch the Cambridge sky,
And, flower-lulled in sleepy grass,
Hear the cool lapse of hours pass,
Until the centuries blend and blur
In Grantchester, in Grantchester!—
Still in the dawnlit waters cool
His ghostly Lordship swims his pool,8
And tries the strokes, essays the tricks,
Long learnt on Hellespont, or Styx.9
Dan Chaucer1 hears his river still
Chatter beneath a phantom mill.
Tennyson2 notes, with studious eye,
How Cambridge waters hurry by . . .
And in that garden, black and white,
Creep whispers through the grass all night;
And spectral dance, before the dawn,
A hundred Vicars down the lawn;
Curates,3 long dust, will come and go
On lissom, clerical, printless toe;lithe, nimble
And oft between the boughs is seen
The sly shade of a Rural Dean4 . . .
Till, at a shiver in the skies,
Vanishing with Satanic cries,
The prim ecclesiastic rout
Leaves but a startled sleeper-out,
Grey heavens, the first bird's drowsy calls,
The falling house that never falls.
Ah God! to see the branches stir
Across the moon at Grantchester!
To smell the thrilling-sweet a n d rotten
U n f o r g e t t a b l e , u n f o r g o t t e n
River-smell, a n d hea r the breez e
S o b b i n g in the little trees.
Say, do the e l m - c l u m p s greatly s t a n d
Still g u a r d i a n s of that holy land
T h e c h e s t n u t s s h a d e , in reverend d r e a m ,
T h e yet u n a c a d e m i c s t r e a m ?
Is dawn a secret shy a n d cold
A n a d y o m e n e , 5 silver-gold
A n d s u n s e t still a golden s e a
F r o m H a s l i n g f i e l d t o M a d i n g l e y ?
A n d after, ere the night is born,
D o hares c o m e out a b o u t the corn
O h , is the water sweet a n d cool,
G e n t l e a n d brown, above the pool
A n d l a u g h s the i m m o r t a l river still
U n d e r the mill, u n d e r the mill
Say, is there B e a u t y yet to find
A n d Certainty a n d Q u i e t kind
D e e p m e a d o w s yet, for to forget
T h e lies, a n d truths, a n d p a i n ? . . . O h ! yet
S t a n d s the C h u r c h c l o c k at ten to three
A n d is there h o n e y still for tea
1914