On ordinary feet.
For what they'd never told me of,
And what I never knew;
It was that all the time, my love,
Love would be merely you.

We come then to the five sonnets inspired by the War. Let us be sparing
of clumsy comment. They are the living heart of young England; the
throbbing soul of all that gracious manhood torn from its happy quest of
Beauty and Certainty, flung unheated into the absurdities of War, and
yet finding in this supreme sacrifice an answer to all its pangs of
doubt. All the hot yearnings of "1905-08" and "1908-11" are gone; here
is no Shropshire Lad enlisting for spite, but a joyous surrender to
England of all that she had given. See his favourite metaphor (that of
the swimmer) recur--what pictures it brings of "Parson's Pleasure" on
the Cher and the willowy bathing pool on the Cam. How one recalls those
white Greek bodies against the green!

Now, God be thanked who has matched us with His hour,
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping.

To those who tell us England is grown old and fat and soft, there is the
answer. It is no hymn of hate that England's youth has sung, but the
farewell of those who, loving life with infinite zest, have yet found in
surrendering it to her the Beauty, the Certainty, yes and the Quiet,
which they had sought. On those five pages are packed in simple words
all the love of life, the love of woman, the love of England that make
Brooke's memory sweet. Never did the sonnet speak to finer purpose. "In