In these three formal ways, besides in minor matters, it appears to me
that Rupert Brooke, judged by the most orthodox standards,
had succeeded in poetry.


III

But in his first notes, if I may indulge my private taste,
I find more of the intoxication of the god. These early poems
are the lyrical cries and luminous flares of a dawn, no doubt;
but they are incarnate of youth. Capital among them is "Blue Evening".
It is original and complete. In its whispering embraces of sense,
in the terror of seizure of the spirit, in the tranquil euthanasia
of the end by the touch of speechless beauty, it seems to me a true symbol
of life whole and entire. It is beautiful in language and feeling,
with an extraordinary clarity and rise of power; and, above all,
though rare in experience, it is real. A young poet's poem;
but it has a quality never captured by perfect art. A poem for poets,
no doubt; but that is the best kind. So, too, the poem,
entitled "Sleeping Out", charms me and stirs me with
its golden clangors and crying flames of emotion as it mounts up
to "the white one flame", to "the laughter and the lips of light".
It is like a holy Italian picture, -- remote, inaccessible, alone.
The "white flame" seems to have had a mystic meaning to the boy;
it occurs repeatedly. And another poem, -- not to make
too long a story of my private enthusiasms -- "Ante Aram", --
wakes all my classical blood, --

"voice more sweet than the far plaint of viols is,