Gallipoli Gallipoli Gallipoli - War at Sea Poetry Norman Wilkinson A Monitor with 14-inch Guns Shelling Yeni Sher Village and the Asiatic Batteries ( thanks to Wikipedia Commons) It is the luckiest thing and the most romantic. Think of fighting in the Chersonese (hope you got the allusion from the Isles of Greece about Miltiades), or alternatively, if it's the Asiatic side they want us on, on the plains of Troy itself! I am going to take my Herodotus as a guide-book.' [FEBRUARY 24, 1915.] Ltn Commander Patrick Shaw-Smith on embarking to Gallipoli Campaign, The Gallipoli Campaign began as a naval attempt to seize the Straits : To lend a crushing blow against the Ottoman Empire, allied to Germany and Austria-Hungary, to connect the Black Sea with the Mediterranean. Britain and France could supply their ally Imperial Russia without the hazardous voyages via the north. Russia would gain it's long term foreign policy goal of access to the Mediterranean. The naval campaign failed in its objectives.

Thus on 25th April 1915 began a massive amphibian landing with British, French, and large numbers of Empire troops taking part. The historians still argue a century later whether the invasion ever stood a chance of success, whether Constantinople could have been seized. As well as forcing the Straits, an attack could have been launched against the Central Powers via the Balkans to eventually break the deadlock on the Western Front. A whole parade of 'what ifs' can be called. The casualty list was enormous . In January 1916 the Allies abandoned the invasion, and a successful embarkation without hardly any loss of life took place. Gallipoli was associated with poetic heroism, The region of Troy where Homer's epic Illiad unfolded. Where Byron wrote part of ' Childe Harold' in 1810 and swam the Hellespont. Byron's 'Don Juan' also reference the region. Gallipoli also became the setting for Great War poetry set on the coast line as well as aboard troopships. Laurence Binyon - most known 'For the Fallen', arguably the most quoted of all World War 1 poems , also wrote about Gallipoli.

Binyon served with the French Red Cross on the Western Front from 1915. Gallipoli "Isles of the Aegean, Troy, and waters of Hellespont! You we have known from of old, Since boyhood stammering glorious Greek was entranced In the tale that Homer told. There scornful Achilles towered and flamed through the battle, Defying the gods; and there Hector armed, and Andromache proudly held up his boy to him, Knowing not yet despair......" Published in 'The Cause' from (1917) Amongst those who sailed were Rupert Brooke of the Royal Naval Reserve Hood Division. Brooke and his fellow officers read 'The Odyssey' to each other in the original Greek. He had already written in a letter to the Prime Minister's daughter Violet Asquith I suddenly realise that the ambition of my life has been- since I was two- to go on a military expedition against Constantinople. Brooke died on 23rd April 1915 from septicaemia most likely from an infected insect bite and buried on the island of Skyros.

His last known poem, usually titled 'Fragments' has been discussed on the 'Troopship' page. Yet besides the heroic element, Great War at Sea Poetry from Gallipoli displays work inspired by 'Disenchantment' : The view that Britain should never take part in the Great War or a pyrrhic victory where the cost of defeating the Central Powers was too much of a price to pay Just sailing there seemed to be inspiring. Ltn Nowell Oxland from the Border Regiment 6th btn, who was killed in action at Gallipoli, 9th August 1915 aged 24 combined an evocation of the natural beauty of Cumbria with a sense of heroic quest.

Outward Bound " ........Though the high Gods smith and slay us, Though we come not whence we go, As the host of Menelaus Came there many years ago; Yet the self-same wind shall bear us From the same departing place Out across the Gulf of Saros And the peaks of Samothrace; We shall pass in summer weather, We shall come at eventide, When the fells stand up together And all quiet things abide; Mixed with cloud and wind and river, Sun-distilled in dew and rain, One with Cumberland for ever We shall go not forth again......" Such work is harder to understand now that the 'Disenchantment' view of the Great War has such influence. Furthermore, we know that Gallipoli campaign failed with horrendous casualties. Yet the combination of majestic natural world connecting to a pagan heroic order is a powerful one, strong enough to have motivated young men to revel in being part of the campaign. A similar Pagan epic view of embarking can be found in John Hargrave's 'Lemnos Harbour' actually written on Mudros Beach, 7th October 1915.

Hargrave was a pacifist and served in the Royal Medical Corps, and later founded the Kibbo Kift movement. Outside of Gallipoli related poetry, it's harder to find reference to the coastline- harbours, beaches, coves, as being the setting for Great War poetry. Lemnos Harbour The ancient Argonauts lay to; Little they dreamt-that dauntless crew- That here today in the sheltered bah Where the seas are still and blue, Great Battle -ships should froth and hum, And almighty transport vessels come Serenely floating through......." Still much underrated Irish poet Francis Ledwidge ,arriving at Gallipoli with the Fifth Royal Iniskilling Fusiliers on 7th August 1915, He survived the campaign , and was killed in action at Third Ypres on 31st July 1917. His work managed to combine both the euphoric and the challenging: In the Mediterranean going to War Lovely wings of gold and green Flit about the sounds I hear, On my window when I lean To the shadows cool and clear.

* * Roaming, I am listening still, Bending, listening overlong, In my soul a steadier will, In my heart a newer song. The Easter Rising of 1916 was credited as a watershed to an Irish patriot such as Ledwidge, but his service at Gallipoli must also count as having changed the course of his writing. 'The Irish in Gallipoli' Where Aegean cliffs with bristling menace front The Threatening splendour of that isley sea Lighted by Troy’s last shadow, where the first Hero kept watch and the last Mystery Shook with dark thunder, hark the battle brunt! A nation speaks, old Silences are burst. Neither for lust of glory nor new throne This thunder and this lightning of our wrath Waken these frantic echoes, not for these Our cross with England’s mingle, to be blown On Mammon’s threshold; we but war when war Serves Liberty and Justice, Love and Peace. Who said that such an emprise could be vain? Were they not one with Christ Who strove and died? Let Ireland weep but not for sorrow.

Weep That by her sons a land is sanctified For Christ Arisen, and angels once again Come back like exile birds to guard their sleep...." A slightly more menacing view, conveying a disturbing sense that the repercussions of Gallipoli were endless. Colm Yore from the Francis Ledwidge Museum kindly advises " This poem was written in France on the 24th February 1917. It first appeared in ‘The Tenth (Irish) Division in Gallipoli’ by Bryan Cooper in the flyleaf page of the book published by Herbert Jenkins in 1918. " There is a strange hint that Britain's empire, just like that of Troy-claiming to rule the Agean Sea, might just fall. Ltn Commander Patrick Shaw-Stewart (RND-Hood Battalion) sailed with Rupert Brooke on the Grantully Castle : Both were friends and became seriously ill together en route to Gallipoli. Shaw-Stewart survived, and commanded the funeral party at Brooke's funeral on Skyros, leading the firing of shots above the grave. He was killed in action on the Western Front on 30th December 1917.

Achilles in the Trench " I saw a man this morning Who did not wish to die I ask, and cannot answer If otherwise wish I Fair broke the day this morning Against the Dardanelles; The breeze blew soft, the morn's cheeks Were cold as cold sea-shells. But other shells are waiting Across the Aegean sea Shells and hells for me O hell of ships and cities, Hell of men like me, Fatal second Helen, Why must I follow thee ......?" The word play of 'shells' and 'shells and hells' is irritating. But the significance of this poem can not be underestimated. A strange precursor of 'Disenchantment' war poetry ? Found handwritten in his copy of Housmans's 'A Shropshire Lad' when he was killed. It's not clear whether he even intended this poem to be published and it's his only known poem. Not known when it was written but has dated this poem to service at Gallipoli. The relocation of the heroic Achilles to a world of shells and shrapnel is intriguing. Wondering how the heroic ideal is going to be fulfilled in an era of modern weapons.

A strange connection between Gallipoli and sea poetry must be the fact that John Masefield , one time poet laureate and author of 'Sea Fever' was to embark on a lecture tour of the USA to justify the Gallipoli invasion. His observations were published in 1916, as 'Gallipoli' , and each chapter of the book opened with a quote from the 'Song of Roland' commemorating the Battle of Roncevaux in 778 . Further Reading. An invaluable booklet 'British & Irish Poets of the Gallipoli Campaign, 1915 Heirs of Achilles' by David Childs & Vivien Whelpton , Cecil Woolf Press, is highly recommended. Interesting to note that future Prime Minister Clement Atlee served at Gallipoli and wrote a poem titled 'Lemnos 1915' I have drawn on this work for Ledwidge's 'Irish in Gallipoli' and Hargrave's 'Lemnos Harbour' from this booklet . Gallipoli Association website is at So far the Great War at Sea Poetry Project has centred on British writers.

There is of course a range of poetry written by those who served from other lands, a prime example being Australian poet Sydney Walter Powell's 'Gallipoli'.. Galllipoli 1916 poem by Maud Geraldine Meugens 1875- 1962 , reproduced by kind permission of Callum James , #17 from his 'Things That Fall Out Of Books' series. Thanks to Phil Dawes for reference to Meugens' poem. For Vivien Whelpton for advice, And to Sally Brown for help with Laurence Binyon .Also to Francis Ledwidge Museum. Proudly powered by Weebly 100 years ago today: the death of English poet Rupert Brooke Share | The British poet Rupert Brooke died on his way to Gallipoli 100 years ago on April 23rd 1915. The poet is well known in the UK – mainly for his sonnet ‘The Solider’. This article on his death has been written by Centenary News writer Catharine Driver: Rupert Brooke was the first of the well-known ‘war poets’ to die during the war.

His posthumous reputation rests on a mere five war sonnets written in 1914 after a couple of days in action during the retreat from Antwerp. Brooke was a significant literary figure of his time: a fellow of Kings College Cambridge; ‘Georgian’ poet; critic, dramatist, travel writer and essayist; yet now he is mainly remembered for a single sonnet, ‘The Soldier’. The most famous lines from the sonnet are: "If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England." Brooke died of septicemia caused by an infected mosquito bite whilst on a troop ship in the Aegean Sea heading for Gallipoli. His friends buried him the next day in an olive grove on the island of Skyros. The following poem fragment was found with his belongings.

It foreshadows his death and those of his comrades, several of whom fell at Gallipoli a few days later Poem Fragment: "I strayed about the deck, an hour, to-night Under a cloudy moonless sky; and peeped In at the windows, watched my friends at table, Or playing cards, or standing in the doorway, Or coming out into the darkness. Still No one could see me." As Brooke’s biographer Christopher Hassall says: “On the day his loss was reported in the Cambridge Review his name was only one of sixty six dead and forty two wounded. It was the beginning of the end of a generation.” ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Other Centenary News coverage: Centenary News Feature: “If I should die think only this of me": the death of Rupert Brooke. Read the article by journalist Peter Biles whose grandfather, Harry Biles, was part of the group that went ashore to bury Brooke. Centenary News Book Review: "Latest Book Review - Forever England: The Life of Rupert Brooke". Read the book review Event News: Rupert Brooke exhibition opens in Skyros, Greece. Read about the exhibition For more information about Rupert Brooke, visit the Rupert Brooke Society website: .

The website has coverage of the event held on Skyros on April 23rd 2015 to mark the poet's death. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Centenary News Update - Friday 24th April The following photo has been sent to Centenary News showing the British ambassador to Greece John Kittmer speaking at the grave of Rupert Brooke at the Skyros memorial ceremony. Brooke, Rupert RND (Poet) (Died 23/4/1915) - Gallipoli Association Forum Brooke, Rupert RND (Poet) (Died 23/4/1915) Topic: Brooke, Rupert RND (Poet) (Died 23/4/1915) Posted: 22 Sep 2010 at 20:24 Rupert Brooke Aegean Sea , off the island of Skyros Cause of death Poetry Rupert Chawner Brooke (middle name sometimes given as Chaucer) [1] (3 August 1887 – 23 April 1915 [2] ) 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 prompted the Irish poet William Butler Yeats to describe him as "the handsomest young man in England". Early life and education Brooke was born at 5 Hillmorton Road in Rugby , Warwickshire , [3] 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 . Life and career 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.

[4] 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 (a house now occupied by Cambridge chemist Mary Archer and her husband, the novelist Jeffrey Archer ). Brooke suffered from a severe emotional crisis in 1913, caused by sexual confusion and jealousy, resulting in the breakdown of his long relationship with Ka Cox (Katherine Laird Cox). [5] Intrigue by both Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey is said[ citation needed ] to have played a part in Brooke's 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.

[6] 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. [7] Brooke was romantically involved with the actress Cathleen Nesbitt and was once engaged to Noel Olivier , whom he met while she was a 15-year-old 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 that Brooke had won 34 years prior. Brooke's most famous collection of poetry, "1914 & Other Poems" was first published in May 1915, and in testament to his popularity ran through 11 further impressions that year, and by June 1918 had reached its 24th impression [8] ; a process undoubtedly fuelled through posthumous interest.

Corner of a Foreign Field A statue of Rupert Brooke in Rugby Brooke's accomplished poetry gained many enthusiasts and followers and he was taken up by Edward Marsh who brought him to the attention of Winston Churchill , then First Lord of the Admiralty . He was commissioned into the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve as a temporary Sub-Lieutenant [9] shortly after his 27th birthday and took part in the Royal Naval Division's Antwerp expedition in October 1914. He sailed with the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force on 28 February 1915 but developed sepsis from an infected mosquito bite. He died at 4:46 pm on 23 April 1915 in a French hospital ship moored in a bay off the island of Skyros in the Aegean on his way to battle at Gallipoli . As the expeditionary force had orders to depart immediately, he was buried at 11 pm in an olive grove on Skyros , Greece . [1] [2] [10] The site was chosen by his close friend, William Denis Browne , who wrote of Brooke's death: [11] ...I sat with Rupert.

At 4 o’clock he became weaker, and at 4.46 he died, with the sun shining all round his cabin, and the cool sea-breeze blowing through the door and the shaded windows. No one could have wished for a quieter or a calmer end than in that lovely bay, shielded by the mountains and fragrant with sage and thyme. Grave of Rupert Brooke on Skyros Island, Greece His grave remains there today. [12] Another friend—and war poet— Patrick Shaw-Stewart , also played a prominent role in Brooke's funeral. [13] On 11 November 1985, Brooke was among 16 First World War poets commemorated on a slate monument unveiled in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey . [14] The inscription on the stone was written by a fellow war poet, Wilfred Owen . It reads: "My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity." [15] Brooke's brother, 2nd Lt.

William Alfred Cotterill Brooke, was a member of the 8th Battalion London Regiment ( Post Office Rifles ) and was killed in action near Le Rutoire Farm on 14 June 1915 aged 24. He is buried in Fosse 7 Military Cemetery (Quality Street), Mazingarbe , Pas de Calais , France . He had only joined the battalion on 25 May. [16] In popular culture The beginning of This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald opens with the quote "... Well this side of Paradise!... There's little comfort in the wise. -Rupert Brooke" This Side of Paradise from Brooke's poem Tiare Tahiti final line. Brooke's poem "A Channel Passage," with its vivid description of seasickness , is used for comic effect in a third season episode, "Springtime", of the television series M*A*S*H . Corporal Radar O'Reilly reads the poem to a nurse he hopes to impress, with surprising results. Radar pronounces the poet's name as "Ruptured Brooke".

Part of Brooke's poem "Dust" is used as the lyric for a song by the same title, composed by Danny Kirwan and recorded by Fleetwood Mac on their 1972 album Bare Trees . Brooke is not credited on the album. On Pink Floyd's war-themed album The Final Cut , the song "The Gunner's Dream" contains the lyrics "in the space between the heavens and the Corner of Some Foreign Field." Portions of Brooke's poem "The Hill" appear at the beginning of the video for the Pet Shop Boys song " Se a vida é (That's the way life is) ". Brooke's poetry is used as character and plot device in the 1981 movie Making Love and the child ultimately born to Kate Jackson's character "Claire" is named after him. In the 1970s television series Upstairs, Downstairs , the character of Lawrence Kirbridge is based largely on Rupert Brooke. In the 1989 television series Blackadder Goes Forth , in the episode "Major Star", the protagonist Blackadder tells his Lieutenant, George, "If I should die, think only this of me, I'll be back to get you!".

This is a parody of the first three lines of Brooke's poem "The Soldier"; "If I should die, think only this of me: / That there's some corner of a foreign field / That is forever England." He is mentioned briefly in The Catcher in the Rye when Allie and D.B. discuss war poets. The 2009 novel, The Great Lover by Jill Dawson is based on the life of Rupert Brooke, which mixes fact with fiction. The title is taken from one of Brooke's poems of the same name. [17] References ^ Dawson, Jill (2009). The Great Lover. Sceptre. ISBN 9780340935668 . Further reading Keith Hale,ed. Friends and Apostles: The Correspondence of Rupert Brooke-James Strachey, 1905-1914. Arthur Springer. Red Wine of Youth—A Biography of Rupert Brooke (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1952). Partly based on extensive correspondence between American travel writer Richard Halliburton and the literary and salon figures who had known Brooke. Christopher Hassall.

"Rupert Brooke: A Biography" (Faber and Faber 1964) Sir Geoffrey Keynes, ed. "The Letters of Rupert Brooke" (Faber and Faber 1968) Colin Wilson. "Poetry & Mysticism" (City Lights Books 1969). Contains a chapter about Rupert Brooke. John Lehmann. "Rupert Brooke: His Life and His Legend" (George Weidenfield and Nicolson Ltd 1980) Mike Read. "Forever England: The Life of Rupert Brooke" (Mainstream Publishing Company Ltd 1997) Nigel Jones. "Rupert Brooke: Life, Death and Myth" (Metro Books,1999) Timothy Rogers.

"Rupert Brooke: A Reappraisal and Selection" (Routledge, 1971) External links 1000+ images about Rupert Brooke on Pinterest | English, Brooke d'orsay and Radford Forward Scholars into Soldiers (1), unfinished painting, Taplow Court, showing the children of the Souls, including Julian and Billy Grenfell, sons of Lord and Lady Desborough of Taplow Court, who were killed within a few weeks of each other in 1915. Among the others shown in the two paintings are Raymond Asquith, Edward Horner, Patrick Shaw Stuart, and Rupert Brooke. pin Rupert Brooke | Poetry Foundation Poetry Foundation Poet Details 1887–1915 Few writers have provoked as much excessive praise and scornful condemnation as English poet Rupert Brooke. Handsome, charming, and talented, Brooke was a national hero even before his death in 1915 at the age of twenty-seven. His poetry, with its unabashed patriotism and graceful lyricism, was revered in a country that was yet to feel the devastating effects of two world wars.

Brooke's early death only solidified his image as "a golden-haired, blue-eyed English Adonis," as Doris L. Eder notes in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, and among those who lauded him after his death were writers Virginia Woolf and Henry James and British statesman Winston Churchill. In the decades after World War I, however, critics reacted against the Brooke legend by calling his verse foolishly naive and sentimental. Despite such extreme opinions, most contemporary observers agree that Brooke—though only a minor poet—occupies a secure place in English literature as a representative of the mood and character of England before World War I. Brooke's early years were typical of virtually every English boy who was a member of a well-to-do family. He attended a prestigious boarding school—Rugby, where his father was a headmaster—studied Latin and Greek, and began to write poetry. It was taken for granted that Brooke would go on to one of the great English universities, and accordingly he entered Cambridge in 1906.

During his three years at Cambridge, Brooke became a visible figure in English intellectual circles, counting among his acquaintances Virginia Woolf, writer Lytton Strachey, economist John Maynard Keynes and his brother Geoffrey (later to become Brooke's bibliographer), and poet William Butler Yeats . Brooke also continued to write poetry, although his poems from this period are, as Eder comments, "highly derivative, facile literary exercises." In The Neo-Pagans: Rupert Brooke and the Ordeal of Youth, Paul Delany gives an example of Brooke's verse from his Cambridge years. Written in 1909, "The Voice," like most of his early poetry, dwells on the themes of love and nature: "Safe in the magic of my woods / I lay, and watched the dying light / . . . The three that I loved, together grew / One, in the hour of knowing, / Night, and the woods, and you." Although his early work is thought to be of little significance, Brooke by this time was considered a serious though unaccomplished poet. In addition, he was an increasingly conspicuous figure in literary circles—a fame fueled without doubt by his charm and good looks.

Between his graduation from Cambridge in 1909 and the start of World War I in 1914, Brooke spent most of his time writing and traveling. His poetry during this period, which still emphasized the themes of love and nature, resembled that of most of the poets of his generation, including D. H. Lawrence , John Drinkwater, and Walter de la Mare. These poets came to be known as Georgian poets (named after England's king at the time); their verse reflects an idealistic preoccupation with rural, youthful motifs. In fact, Brooke and many of his friends enjoyed spending time in the countryside, bathing nude in local streams and sleeping on the ground; such activities earned them the nickname "neo-pagans." Eder points out that "Georgian verse now seems faded and pseudopastoral, a poetry of suburbia written by city dwellers celebrating cozy weekends in flower-wreathed country cottages." At the time, though, such poetry was fashionable and respected, and the first collection of poems by these writers, Georgian Poetry, 1911-1912, was extremely successful.

"The Old Vicarage, Grantchester" was Brooke's contribution to Georgian Poetry, and it remains one of his most popular poems. Grantchester is a small village near Cambridge where Brooke lived for a time after 1909. Brooke, however, wrote the poem later in a cafe in Germany. The poem's nostalgia for an England far away—"And laughs the immortal river still / Under the mill, under the mill / . . . Stands the Church clock at ten to three / And is there honey still for tea?," as quoted by Delany in The Neo-Pagans—reflects "patriotism and homesickness at their most endearing," writes Eder. After Brooke's death, Henry James wrote that the poem was "booked for immortality." Christopher Hassall, in his introduction to The Prose of Rupert Brooke, offers a perhaps more realistic analysis when he comments that "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester"—though one of Brooke's most personal and original statements—is nonetheless a "lightweight poem." "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester" was written in mid-1912, one of the most turbulent periods in Brooke's life.

According to Delany, Brooke had experienced a sexual crisis—confusion about homosexual impulses and frustration caused by the rejections of a woman with whom he was in love. In early 1912, these tensions culminated in a nervous breakdown. Brooke spent several months in rehabilitation, during which he was not allowed to write poetry. By summer, though, he had recovered enough to travel to Germany, a trip that marked the beginning of almost three years of constant travel. In May of 1913, he traveled to the United States, where he spent four months before sailing to the South Pacific. Of the seven months that Brooke stayed in the Pacific, three were spent in Tahiti, where, as Delany states, he wrote "the best of his poems, and [experienced] probably the most unbroken happiness of his life." Several of the poems that Brooke wrote during this period are considered to be among his most effective, including " Tiare Tahiti " and "The Great Lover." Delany notes that the first poem's inspiration was a woman called "Taatamata," whom Brooke met and became intimate with in Tahiti.

Not surprisingly, the poem is a love poem, a tribute to an exotic land and carefree love: "Hasten, hand in human hand, / Down the dark, the flowered way, / . . . And in the water's soft caress, / Wash the mind of foolishness, / Mamua, until the day." "The Great Lover" is a list "of the hundred and one everyday things that gave [the poet] joy," writes A. C. Ward in Twentieth-Century Literature: 1901-1950. "He invested this domestic catalogue with significance and beauty, and turned the commonplace into the strangely new," praises Ward. Similarly, John Lehmann in Rupert Brooke: His Life and His Legend remarks on "the precise and vivid images with which in The Great Lover [Brooke] enumerates the concrete things that evoke his love in recollection." Despite the apparent happiness that Brooke found in Tahiti, he decided to return to England in the spring of 1914. Within a few months of his return, World War I began. Like most men of his age and class, Brooke immediately volunteered for service in the war.

He joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve; the group's first destination was Antwerp, Belgium, where it stayed through the beginning of 1915. The area around Antwerp was not volatile at this time, though, and the Reserve saw no military action during its entire stay in Belgium. The lull in fighting turned into a fruitful period for Brooke, for it was then that he produced his best-known poetry, the group of five war sonnets titled "Nineteen Fourteen." Written during late 1914, these sonnets express the hopeful idealism and enthusiasm with which Britain entered the war. In the first sonnet, "Peace," Brooke rejoices in the feeling that the war is a welcome relief to a generation for whom life had been empty and void of meaning.

As quoted by Bernard Bergonzi in Heroes' Twilight: A Study of the Literature of the Great War, Brooke wrote: "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, / Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary." In the second sonnet, "Safety," Brooke continues to revel in the coming of war by comparing death to a shelter that protects its refugees from the horrors of life. The third and fourth sonnets are both titled "The Dead," but it is the second of the two that has enjoyed more popularity and more critical acclaim. In this fourth sonnet, Brooke again paints death as a positive, pristine state. For Brooke, death is like an infinite frost that "leaves a white / Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance, / A width, a shining peace, under the night," as quoted by Eder. Finally, Brooke ends the sonnet sequence with "The Soldier," his most famous and most openly patriotic poem.

He imagines his own death, but rather than conveying sadness or fear at such an event, he accepts it as an opportunity to make a noble sacrifice by dying for his country. As quoted by Delany, Brooke wrote: "If I should die, think only this of me, / That there's some corner of a foreign field / That is forever England." The "Nineteen Fourteen" sonnets were immediately famous. On Easter Sunday in 1915, the dean of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, William Ralph Inge, read aloud "The Soldier." Brooke's death three weeks later insured that his name would always be intertwined with the war sonnets, and with "The Soldier" in particular. As A. C. Ward comments, "The Soldier" "became the one poem inseparably linked with Rupert Brooke's name. It is, for all time, his epitaph—beautiful and tranquil." The events surrounding Brooke's death were a significant factor in the success of "Nineteen Fourteen." In February of 1915, Brooke had been ordered to sail to the Dardanelles—a strait between Europe and Turkey—for the Gallipoli campaign that would begin that spring.

During the journey, however, Brooke contracted blood poisoning from an insect bite; he died on April 23 on a ship in the Aegean Sea and was buried in an olive grove on the Greek island of Skyros. Such a death and burial, notes Delany, fueled the myth that the handsome poet had provoked the wrath of angry, jealous gods. "Rupert's death was first reported as caused by sunstroke," writes Delany, "and had not Phoebus Apollo, the golden-haired god of poetry, struck down Marsyas for boasting that he could sing as well as the god?" Furthermore, Brooke died in a part of the world long associated with another famous English poet, George Gordon , Lord Byron.

As Delany says, "Now another Cambridge poet, who had loved to swim in Byron's Pool, had shared Byron's fate." Brooke's death was felt throughout his country; Eder states that "all England mourned the poet-soldier's death." In his tribute to Brooke for the London Times as quoted by Delany, Winston Churchill praised Brooke's "classic symmetry of mind and body." "He was all that one would wish England's noblest sons to be," added Churchill, "in days when no sacrifice but the most precious is acceptable." Since the war was still in its early stages, such sentiment could still be cherished. After the staggering number of deaths that the English incurred during the trench warfare of 1916 and 1917, however, such patriotic feeling was viewed—like Brooke's poetry—as foolish and naive.

As John Lehmann comments, "What soldier, who had experienced the meaningless horror and foulness of the Western Front stalemate in 1916 and 1917, could think of it as a place to greet 'as swimmers into cleanness leaping' or as a welcome relief 'from a world grown old and cold and weary'?" A more realistic poetry grew out of the war's latter stages and supplanted Brooke's verse as the most important literary expression of the war. Poets such as Wilfred Owen , Siegfried Sassoon , and Robert Graves captured the terror and tragedy of modern warfare; next to their poetry, Brooke's war sonnets seem "sentimental and unrealistic," notes Lehmann. For several decades after his death Brooke's poetry—though always popular—was dismissed by critics responding both to the consequences of two world wars and to the pessimistic poetry that dominated the age, of which T. S. Eliot 's The Waste Land is the prime example. But more recent critics, while admitting that Brooke's poetry lacks depth, maintain that his verse does have significance.

In Rupert Brooke: The Man and the Poet, Robert Brainard Pearsall does not deny the "slightness in mass and idea" of Brooke's work but avers that "all technical criticism droops before the fact that his verse was lyrical, charming, and companionable." Other critics, including Eder and Edward A. McCourt, argue that Brooke's poetry—especially the "Nineteen Fourteen" sequence—is important as a barometer of England between 1910 and 1915. As Eder states, "Brooke's war sonnets perfectly captured the mood of the moment." Bibliography Poems, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1911 (also see below). (Editor with Edward Marsh, and contributor) Georgian Poetry, 1911-1912 (includes The Old Vicarage, Grantchester), Poetry Bookshop, 1912. Nineteen Fourteen, and Other Poems, Doubleday, 1915 (also see below).

The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke (includes Poems and Nineteen Fourteen, and Other Poems), introduction by George Edward Woodberry, John Lane, 1915, edited and with a memoir by Edward Marsh, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1918, revised edition, 1942. Lithuania: A Drama in One Act, Chicago Little Theatre, 1915. Letters From America (essays first published in Westminster Gazette and New Statesman), preface by Henry James, Scribner, 1916. John Webster and the Elizabethan Drama (thesis), John Lane, 1916. The Poetical Works of Rupert Brooke, edited by Geoffrey Keynes, Faber, 1946, 2nd edition, 1970. Democracy and the Arts (nonfiction), Hart-Davis, 1946. The Prose of Rupert Brooke, edited and introduced by Christopher Hassall, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1956. The Letters of Rupert Brooke, edited by Geoffrey Keynes, Harcourt, 1968.

Rupert Brooke: A Reappraisal and Selection From His Writings, Some Hitherto Unpublished, edited by Timothy Rogers, Barnes & Noble, 1971. Four Poems of Rupert Brooke, Scolar Press (London), 1974. Letters From Rupert Brooke to His Publisher, 1911-1914, Octagon Books, 1975. Rupert Brooke in Canada, edited by Sandra Martin and Roger Hall, PMA Books (Toronto), c. 1978. Song of Love: The Letters of Rupert Brooke and Noel Olivier, 1909-1915, edited by Pippa Harris, Crown (New York, NY), 1991. The Irregular Verses of Rupert Brooke, arranged with commentary by Peter Miller, Green Branch (Lechlade, Gloucestershire), 1997. Rupert Brooke and James Strachey: The Hidden Correspondence, 1905-1915, edited by Keith Hale, Yale University Press, 1998.

Further Readings Bergonzi, Bernard, Heroes' Twilight: A Study of the Literature of the Great War, Constable, 1965. Cheason, Denis, The Cambridgeshire of Rupert Brooke, privately printed, 1980. Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, Volume 6: Modern Writers, 1914-1945, Gale, 1991. de la Mare, Walter, Rupert Brooke and the Intellectual Imagination,Sidgwick & Jackson, 1919. Delany, Paul, The Neo-Pagans: Rupert Brooke and the Ordeal of Youth, Free Press, 1987. Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 19: British Poets, 1880-1914, Gale, 1983. Hastings, Michael, The Handsomest Young Man in England: Rupert Brooke, Michael Joseph, 1967. Keynes, Geoffrey, A Bibliography of Rupert Brooke, Hart-Davis, 1959. Laskowski, William E., Rupert Brooke, Twayne (New York, NY), 1994.

Lehmann, John, Rupert Brooke: His Life and His Legend, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980. Pearsall, Robert Brainard, Rupert Brooke: The Man and the Poet, Humanities Press, 1975. Read, Mike, Forever England: The Life of Rupert Brooke, Mainstream Publishing, 1997. Rogers, Timothy, editor, Rupert Brooke: A Reappraisal and Selection from His Writings, Some Hitherto Unpublished, Barnes & Noble, 1971. Rutherford, Jonathan, Forever England: Reflections on Race, Masculinity, and Empire, Lawrence & Wishart (London), 1997. Stringer, Arthur, Red Wine of Youth: A Life of Rupert Brooke, Bobbs-Merrill, 1948. Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, Gale, Volume 2, 1979; Volume 7, 1982. World Literature Criticism, Gale, 1992. PERIODICALS New York Times Book Review, November 24, 1968.

Times Literary Supplement, August 8, 1918; July 18, 1968; November 27, 1987. Voice Literary Supplement, June, 1988. Discover this poet's context and related poetry, articles, and media. Poems by Rupert Brooke Rupert Brooke (1887 -1915) Biography For one whom Yeats proclaimed "the handsomest young man in England," Rupert Brooke has not aged well. The neo-Romanticism of Brooke and the Georgian Poets was one of the casualties of The Great War. Paul Fussell (in The Great War and Modern Memory ) sees irony as one of the by-products of the First World War, and one of the many ironies of the war is that Rupert Brooke is remembered as a war poet at all, because he is actually not a war poet -- not in the same sense that Siegfried Sassoon , Robert Graves and Wilfred Owen are war poets. Rupert Brooke is rather a pre-war poet. To borrow Blake's contrast, Brooke wrote Songs of Innocence (if not naïveté), while Sassoon and Owen (and others) wrote Songs of Experience.

Brooke's entire reputation as a war poet rests on only 5 "war sonnets" (6 if you count " Treasure " -- unnumbered in his short sonnet cycle). Brooke's war experience consisted of one day of limited military action with the Hood Battalion during the evacuation of Antwerp. Consequently, his "war sonnets" swell with sentiments of the most general kind on the themes of maturity, purpose and romantic death -- the kind of sentiments held by many (but not all) young Englishmen at the outbreak of the war. Brooke's "war sonnets" are really more a declaration occasioned by the ups and downs of his tumultuous personal life than a call to war for his generation. Brooke was already a promising young poet when Britain entered the war the day after his 27th birthday. Unfortunately, the publication of his (pre-) "war sonnets" coincided with his almost mythological (pre-war) death: on Easter Sunday, 1915, Dean Inge read his sonnet " The Soldier " from the pulpit of Saint Paul's; on April 23rd (St.

George's Day, the traditional observance of Shakespeare's birth) Brooke died in the Aegean Sea (from blood poisoning) on his way to battle at Gallipoli and was buried on the Island of Skyros. Winston Churchill wrote his obituary for The Times, Lascelles Abercrombie for the Morning Post. As D.H. Lawrence exclaimed: "he was slain by bright Pheobus' shaft . . . it was a real climax of his pose . . . bright Pheobus smote him down. It is all in the saga. O God, O God; it is all too much of a piece: it is like madness." Brooke was born in 1887 at Rugby where his father was a housemaster. His dominating mother exerted a tremendous influence on him. Brooke traveled in Europe where he prepared a thesis, John Webster and the Elizabethan Drama, which won for him a fellowship at King's College, Cambridge. He roamed across North America and the South Seas for the Westminster Gazette sending back narratives and poems. Brooke was an energetic aesthete skilled at playful, irreverent satire ("Heaven") and not afraid to shock his audience with graphic descriptions ("Channel Crossing").

Rupert Brooke Rupert Brooke, (August 3, 1887–23 April 1915) English poet, died of disease in the First World War during his Naval service in the Aegean Sea. But he wrote poetry and was a reporter before the war. Seaside Swiftly out from the friendly lilt of the band, The crowd's good laughter, the loved eyes of men, I am drawn nightward; I must turn again Where, down beyond the low untrodden strand, There curves and glimmers outward to the unknown The old unquiet ocean. All the shade Is rife with magic and movement. I stray alone Here on the edge of silence, half afraid, Waiting a sign. In the deep heart of me The sullen waters swell towards the moon, And all my tides set seaward. From inland Leaps a gay fragment of some mocking tune, That tinkles and laughs and fades along the sand, And dies between the seawall and the sea. " I have need to busy my heart with quietude. " Rupert Brooke, 1913.

Rupert Brooke - Poet | Academy of American Poets Academy of American Poets The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets. For over three generations, the Academy has connected millions of people to great poetry through programs such as National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world; Poets.org, the Academy’s popular website; American Poets, a biannual literary journal; and an annual series of poetry readings and special events. Since its founding, the Academy has awarded more money to poets than any other organization. browse poems & poets First World War English poet Rupert Chawner Brooke was born on August 3, 1887. The son of the Rugby School's housemaster, Brooke excelled in both academics and athletics. He entered his father's school at the age of fourteen. A lover of verse since the age of nine, he won the school poetry prize in 1905. A year later, he attended King's College, Cambridge, where he was known for his striking good looks, charm, and intellect. While at Cambridge, he developed an interest in acting and was president of the University Fabian Society.

Brooke published his first poems in 1909; his first book, Poems, appeared in 1911. While working on his dissertation on John Webster and Elizabethan dramatists, he lived in the house that he made famous by his poem "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester." Popular in both literary and political circles, he befriended Winston Churchill, Henry James, and members of the Bloomsbury Group, including Virginia Woolf. Although he was popular, Brooke had a troubled love life. Between 1908 and 1912 he fell in love with three women: Noel Olivier, youngest daughter of the governor of Jamaica; Ka Cox, who preceded him as president of the Fabian Society; and Cathleen Nesbitt, a British actress. None of the relationships were long lasting. In 1912, after his third romance failed, Brooke left England to travel in France and Germany for several months. Upon his return to England, Brooke received a fellowship at King's College and spent time in both Cambridge and London. In 1912 he compiled an anthology entitled Georgian Poetry, 1911-12, with Edward Marsh.

The Georgian poets wrote in an anti-Victorian style, using rustic themes and subjects such as friendship and love. While critics viewed Brooke's poetry as too sentimental and lacking depth, they also considered his work a reflection of the mood in England during the years leading up to World War I. After experiencing a mental breakdown in 1913, Brooke traveled again, spending several months in America, Canada, and the South Seas. During his trip, he wrote essays about his impressions for the Westminster Gazette, which were collected in Letters From America (1916). While in the South Seas, he wrote some of his best poems, including "Tiare Tahiti" and "The Great Lover." He returned to England at the outbreak of World War I and enlisted in the Royal Naval Division. His most famous work, the sonnet sequence 1914 and Other Poems, appeared in 1915. On April 23, 1915, after taking part in the Antwerp Expedition, he died of blood poisoning from a mosquito bite while en route to Gallipoli with the Navy. He was buried on the island of Skyros in the Aegean Sea.

Following his death, Brooke, who was already famous, became a symbol in England of the tragic loss of talented youth during the war. Selected Bibliography

Question: Which poet died of septicaemia in the Aegean Sea in 1915?
Answer: Rupert Brooke