And felt the Classics were not dead,
To glimpse a Naiad's reedy head,

Or hear the Goat-foot 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,

And tries the strokes, essays the tricks,
Long learnt on Hellespont, or Styx.

Dan Chaucer hears his river still
Chatter beneath a phantom mill.

Tennyson 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, long dust, will come and go
On lissom, clerical, printless toe;

And oft between the boughs is seen
The sly shade of a Rural Dean . . .

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.

* epsilon-iota'/-theta-epsilon gamma-epsilon-nu-omicron-iota/-mu-eta-nu
God! I will pack, and take a train,

And get me to England once again!
For England's the one land, I know,

Where men with Splendid Hearts may go;
And Cambridgeshire, of all England,

The shire for Men who Understand;
And of THAT district I prefer

The lovely hamlet Grantchester.
For Cambridge people rarely smile,

Being urban, squat, and packed with guile;
And Royston men in the far South

Are black and fierce and strange of mouth;
At Over they fling oaths at one,

And worse than oaths at Trumpington,
And Ditton girls are mean and dirty,

And there's none in Harston under thirty,
And folks in Shelford and those parts

Have twisted lips and twisted hearts,
And Barton men make Cockney rhymes,

And Coton's full of nameless crimes,
And things are done you'd not believe

At Madingley on Christmas Eve.
Strong men have run for miles and miles,

When one from Cherry Hinton smiles;
Strong men have blanched, and shot their wives,

Rather than send them to St. Ives;
Strong men have cried like babes, bydam,

To hear what happened at Babraham.
But Grantchester! ah, Grantchester!

There's peace and holy quiet there,
Great clouds along pacific skies,

And men and women with straight eyes,
Lithe children lovelier than a dream,

A bosky wood, a slumbrous stream,
And little kindly winds that creep

Round twilight corners, half asleep.
In Grantchester their skins are white;

They bathe by day, they bathe by night;
The women there do all they ought;

The men observe the Rules of Thought.
They love the Good; they worship Truth;

They laugh uproariously in youth;
(And when they get to feeling old,

They up and shoot themselves, I'm told) . . .
Ah God! to see the branches stir

Across the moon at Grantchester!
To smell the thrilling-sweet and rotten

Unforgettable, unforgotten
River-smell, and hear the breeze

Sobbing in the little trees.
Say, do the elm-clumps greatly stand

Still guardians of that holy land?
The chestnuts shade, in reverend dream,

The yet unacademic stream?
Is dawn a secret shy and cold

Anadyomene, silver-gold?
And sunset still a golden sea

From Haslingfield to Madingley?
And after, ere the night is born,

Do hares come out about the corn?
Oh, is the water sweet and cool,

Gentle and brown, above the pool?
And laughs the immortal river still

Under the mill, under the mill?
Say, is there Beauty yet to find?

And Certainty? and Quiet kind?
Deep meadows yet, for to forget

The lies, and truths, and pain? . . . oh! yet
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?

And is there honey still for tea?
[End of Poems.]

Rupert Brooke: A Biographical Note
Any biographical account of Rupert Brooke must of necessity be brief;

yet it is well to know the facts of his romantic career,
and to see him as far as may be through the eyes of those who knew him

(the writer was unfortunately not of this number) in order the better
to appreciate his work.

He was born at Rugby on August 3, 1887, his father, William Brooke,
being an assistant master at the school. Here Brooke was educated,

and in 1905 won a prize for a poem called "The Bastille",
which has been described as "fine, fluent stuff." He took a keen interest

in every form of athletic sport, and played both cricket and football
for the school. Though he afterwards dropped both these games,

he developed as a sound tennisplayer, was a great walker, and found joy
in swimming, like Byron and Swinburne, especially by night. He delighted

in the Russian ballet and went again and again to a good Revue.
In 1906 he went up to King's College, Cambridge, where he made

innumerable friends, and was considered one of the leading intellectuals
of his day, among his peers being James Elroy Flecker,

himself a poet of no small achievement, who died at Davos
only a few months ago. Mr. Ivan Lake, the editor of the `Bodleian',

a contemporary at Cambridge, tells me that although the two men
moved in different sets, they frequented the same literary circles.

Brooke, however, seldom, if ever, spoke at the Union,
but was a member of the Cambridge Fabian Society, and held the posts

of Secretary and President in turn. His socialism was accompanied by