“the Angel of the Off-shore Wind: / He that bites the thunder when the bull-mouthed breakers flee”

Rough waters for Sea Poetry Monday:


A Channel Passage, Rupert Brooke

The damned ship lurched and slithered. Quiet and quick
    My cold gorge rose; the long sea rolled; I knew
I must think hard of something, or be sick;
    And could think hard of only one thing—you!
You, you alone could hold my fancy ever!
    And with you memories come, sharp pain, and dole.
Now there’s a choice—heartache or tortured liver!
    A sea-sick body, or a you-sick soul!

Do I forget you? Retchings twist and tie me,
    Old meat, good meals, brown gobbets, up I throw.
Do I remember? Acrid return and slimy,
    The sobs and slobber of a last years woe.
And still the sick ship rolls. ’Tis hard, I tell ye,
To choose ’twixt love and nausea, heart and belly.


Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) was an astonishingly good-looking but otherwise typical Georgian poet who won fame with a handful of patriotic war poems. It is unknown if he would have remained as optimistic if he had not died during the Gallipoli campaign (before the landing, it turns out, and not during as I've always assumed) and experienced some actual war. He also wrote other light verse, but frankly I find his travel writing the most interesting part of his output.

---L.

Subject quote from The Last Chantey, Rudyard Kipling.