Selected Poems

by Rupert Brooke

Rupert Brooke was a 20th century poet best known for war-related poetry, especially during the early part of World War I. He would end up dying during the war of sepsis, and this is a compilation of his poems, including his most famous, The Soldier.

Genres: Poetry

48 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1917

About the author

Rupert Chawner Brooke (middle name sometimes given as Chaucer) was an English poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the First World War, especially The Soldier. He was also known for his boyish good looks, which it is alleged prompted the Irish poet W.B. Yeats to describe him as "the handsomest young man in England."

Brooke was born at 5 Hillmorton Road in Rugby, Warwickshire, the second of the three sons of William Parker Brooke, a Rugby schoolmaster, and Ruth Mary Brooke, née Cotterill. He was educated at two independent schools in the market town of Rugby, Warwickshire; Hillbrow School and Rugby School.
While travelling in Europe he prepared a thesis entitled John Webster and the Elizabethan Drama, which won him a scholarship to King's College, Cambridge, where he became a member of the Cambridge Apostles, helped found the Marlowe Society drama club and acted in plays including the Cambridge Greek Play.

Brooke made friends among the Bloomsbury group of writers, some of whom admired his talent while others were more impressed by his good looks. Virginia Woolf boasted to Vita Sackville-West of once going skinny-dipping with Brooke in a moonlit pool when they were at Cambridge together.

Brooke belonged to another literary group known as the Georgian Poets and was one of the most important of the Dymock poets, associated with the Gloucestershire village of Dymock where he spent some time before the war. He also lived in the Old Vicarage, Grantchester.

Brooke suffered a severe emotional crisis in 1912, caused by sexual confusion and jealousy, resulting in the breakdown of his long relationship with Ka Cox (Katherine Laird Cox). Brooke's paranoia that Lytton Strachey had schemed to destroy his relationship with Cox by encouraging her to see Henry Lamb precipitated his break with his Bloomsbury Group friends and played a part in his nervous collapse and subsequent rehabilitation trips to Germany.

As part of his recuperation, Brooke toured the United States and Canada to write travel diaries for the Westminster Gazette. He took the long way home, sailing across the Pacific and staying some months in the South Seas. Much later it was revealed that he may have fathered a daughter with a Tahitian woman named Taatamata with whom he seems to have enjoyed his most complete emotional relationship. Brooke fell heavily in love several times with both men and women, although his bisexuality was edited out of his life by his first literary executor. Many more people were in love with him. Brooke was romantically involved with the actress Cathleen Nesbitt and was once engaged to Noel Olivier, whom he met, when she was aged 15, at the progressive Bedales School.

Brooke was an inspiration to poet John Gillespie Magee, Jr., author of the poem "High Flight". Magee idolised Brooke and wrote a poem about him ("Sonnet to Rupert Brooke"). Magee also won the same poetry prize at Rugby School which Brooke had won 34 years earlier.

As a war poet Brooke came to public attention in 1915 when The Times Literary Supplement quoted two of his five sonnets (IV: The Dead and V: The Soldier) in full on 11 March and his sonnet V: The Soldier was read from the pulpit of St Paul's Cathedral on Easter Sunday (4 April). Brooke's most famous collection of poetry, containing all five sonnets, 1914 & Other Poems, was first published in May 1915 and, in testament to his popularity, ran to 11 further impressions that year and by June 1918 had reached its 24th impression; a process undoubtedly fueled through posthumous interest.

Reviews

[Fiona · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whilst I did not find this limited edition as aesthetically pleasing as that produced for Edward Thomas’s poetry, it was still a pleasure to hold, and to behold. As is always the case when reading poetry, there were some that pulled, and held, me more than others. It is hard to choose a favourite poem from such a rich collection, but The Great Lover resonated strongly within me as I read. And though I have read The Soldier times without number, it is still as powerful as ever and I found myself reading it several times before I could bring myself to turn the page. I’m sure I will be returning to this beautiful book again and again.

[Steve Horan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recently read This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald and in it the author references Rupert Brooke and his poems several times. In fact, the book gets its name from Brooke’s poem Tiare Tahiti. Here is the final verse:

Or floating lazy, half-asleep
Dive and double and follow after,
Snare in flowers, and kiss, and call,
With lips that fade, and human laughter
And faces individual,
Well this side of Paradise!…
There’s little comfort in the wise.

I read from a lovely edition by the Folio Society. Beautiful patterned cover and colorful artwork throughout that compliments the poems perfectly.