The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke

Waikiki

   Warm perfumes like a breath from vine and tree
    Drift down the darkness.  Plangent, hidden from eyes
    Somewhere an 'eukaleli' thrills and cries
   And stabs with pain the night's brown savagery.
   And dark scents whisper; and dim waves creep to me,
    Gleam like a woman's hair, stretch out, and rise;
    And new stars burn into the ancient skies,
   Over the murmurous soft Hawaian sea.

   And I recall, lose, grasp, forget again,
    And still remember, a tale I have heard, or known,
   An empty tale, of idleness and pain,
    Of two that loved — or did not love — and one
   Whose perplexed heart did evil, foolishly,
   A long while since, and by some other sea.

   Waikiki, 1913