his hands the thing became a trumpet"--


THE DEAD

Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!
There's none of these so lonely and poor of old,
But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.
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 immortality.

Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth
Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain.
Honour has come back, as a King, to earth,
And paid his subjects with a royal wage;
And Nobleness walks in our ways again;
And we have come into our heritage.

It would be misleading, perhaps, to leave Brooke's poetry with the echo
of this solemn note. No understanding of the man would be complete
without mentioning the vehement gladness and merriment he found in all
the commonplaces of life. Poignant to all cherishers of the precious
details of existence must be his poem _The Great Lover_ where he
catalogues a sort of trade order list of his stock in life. The lines
speak with the very accent of Keats. These are some of the things he
holds dear--