酷兔英语
    当前位置:
  1. 首页
  2. 文章
  3. 娱乐英语
  4. 原版小说
  5. 正文

Poems of Rupert Brooke-Part15_Rupert C.Brooke(1887-1915)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

0 收藏 0 分享 0 赞

章节正文
文章总共2页


more beautifullyappropriate, than the publication of Rupert Brooke's

noble sonnet-sequence, `1914', a few swift weeks before the death



they had imagined, and had already made lovely. Each one of these

five sonnets faces, in a quiet exultation, the thought of death,



of death for England; and understands, as seldom even English poetry

has understood, the unspeakable beauty of the thought:



"These laid the world away; poured out the red

Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be



Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene

That men call age; and those who would have been,



Their sons, they gave -- their mortality" target="_blank" title="n.不死，不朽，永生，来生">immortality.

I am strangelymistaken if the accent of the noblest English poetry



does not speak to us in those lines. And again:

"If I should die, think only this of me:



That there's some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England. There shall be



In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,



Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,

A body of England's breathing, breathing English air,



Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

"This -- this music, this beauty, this courage -- was Rupert Brooke.



But it is, we may be sure, his mortality" target="_blank" title="n.不死，不朽，永生，来生">immortality. It is not yet tolerable

to speak of personal loss. The name seemed to stand for a magical vitality



that must be safe -- safe! Yes, `and if these poor limbs die,

safest of all!' What poetry has lost in him cannot be judged by any one



who has not read those last sonnets, now his farewell to England

and the world. I am not underrating the rest of his work.



There was an intellectual keenness and brightness in it, a fire of imagery

and (in the best sense) wit, the like of which had not been known,



or known only in snatches, in our literature since the best days of

the later Elizabethans. And it was all penetrated by a mastering passion,



the most elemental of all passions -- the passion for life.

`I have been so great a lover,' he cries, and artfully leads us on



to think he means the usual passion of a young poet's career.

But it is just life he loves, and not in any abstract sense,



but all the infinite little familiar details of life catalogued

with delighted jest. This was profoundlysincere: no one ever loved life



more wholly or more minutely. And he celebrated his love exquisitely,

often unforgettably, through all his earlier poetry,



getting further intensity from a long sojourn in the South Seas.

But this passion for life had never had seriously to fight for



its rights and joys. Like all great lovers of life, he had pleased himself

with the thought of death and after death: not insincerely, by any means,



but simply because this gave a finer relish to the sense of being alive.

Platonism, which offers delightful games for such subtle wit as his,



he especially liked to play with. It was one more element in the life

of here and now, the life of mortal thought and sense and spirit,



infinitely varying and by him infinitely loved. And then came 1914;

and his passion for life had suddenly to face the thought



of voluntary death. But there was no struggle; for instantly

the passion for life became one with the will to die --



and now it has become death itself. But first Rupert Brooke

had told the world once more how the passion for beautiful life



may reach its highest passion and most radiant beauty when it is

the determination to die."



Margaret Lavington.

London, October, 1915.



Appendix

In Memory of Rupert Brooke



In alien earth, across a troubled sea,

His body lies that was so fair and young.



His mouth is stopped, with half his songs unsung;

His arm is still, that struck to make men free.






文章总共2页
文章标签:名著  

章节正文
Copyright © 2023 Qeto All rights reserved.
商务合作 | 联系我们 | 关于我们 | 版权声明 | 隐私条款 | 如果智培

京ICP备05059198号-1 京公网安备 11011202003401号