The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke

Hauntings

   In the grey tumult of these after years
    Oft silence falls; the incessant wranglers part;
   And less-than-echoes of remembered tears
    Hush all the loud confusion of the heart;
   And a shade, through the toss'd ranks of mirth and crying
    Hungers, and pains, and each dull passionate mood, —
   Quite lost, and all but all forgot, undying,
    Comes back the ecstasy of your quietude.

   So a poor ghost, beside his misty streams,
   Is haunted by strange doubts, evasive dreams,
    Hints of a pre-Lethean life, of men,
   Stars, rocks, and flesh, things unintelligible,
    And light on waving grass, he knows not when,
   And feet that ran, but where, he cannot tell.

   The Pacific, 1914

Sonnet (Suggested by some of the Proceedings
     of the Society for Psychical Research)

   Not with vain tears, when we're beyond the sun,
    We'll beat on the substantial doors, nor tread
    Those dusty high-roads of the aimless dead
   Plaintive for Earth; but rather turn and run
   Down some close-covered by-way of the air,
    Some low sweet alley between wind and wind,
    Stoop under faint gleams, thread the shadows, find
   Some whispering ghost-forgotten nook, and there

   Spend in pure converse our eternal day;
    Think each in each, immediately wise;
   Learn all we lacked before; hear, know, and say
    What this tumultuous body now denies;
   And feel, who have laid our groping hands away;
    And see, no longer blinded by our eyes.