On his grave we heaped great blocks of white marble; the men of his
company made a great wooden cross for his head, with his name upon
it, and his platoon put a smaller one at his feet. On the back of
the large cross our interpreter wrote in Greek.... "Here lies the
servant of God, sub-lieutenant in the English navy, who died for the
deliverance of Constantinople from the Turks."

The next morning we sailed, and had no chance of revisiting his
grave.

It is no mere flippancy to say that the War did much for Rupert Brooke.
The boy who had written many hot, morbid, immature verses and a handful
of perfect poetry, stands now by one swift translation in the golden
cloudland of English letters. There will never, can never, be any
laggard note in the praise of his work. And of a young poet dead one may
say things that would be too fulsome for life. Professor Gilbert Murray
is quoted:

"Among all who have been poets and died young, it is hard to think of
one who, both in life and death, has so typified the ideal radiance of
youth and poetry."

In the grave among the olive trees on the island of Skyros, Brooke found
at least one Certainty--that of being "among the English poets." He
would probably be the last to ask a more high-sounding epitaph.

His "Collected Poems" as published consist of eighty-two pieces, fifty
of which were published in his first book, issued (in England only) in
1911. That is to say fifty of the poems were written before the age of