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larryhammerRough 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.
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.
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Date: 25 June 2018 04:37 pm (UTC)That's good.
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Date: 25 June 2018 05:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 25 June 2018 06:08 pm (UTC)Okay, I just read "Sonnet Reversed" and that's brilliant. My previous familiarity with Brooke was his war poems (and "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester," because you can't take a step through English poetry without hitting that), none of which suggested to me that he could have grown up to be Edwin Arlington Robinson. Now I'm sorry he died before he got good. I never had any particular feeling about it before.
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Date: 25 June 2018 07:36 pm (UTC)Yes, "Sonnet Reversed" is indeed better light verse. Brooke also has some love poetry that is not top-tier stuff but approaching that, and it would have been interesting to see where he took that strain with a little more maturity. Some of it, fwiw, made its way into one of Zelazny's novels -- The Dream Master? Isle of the Dead? Not sure now -- which is where I first encountered him.
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Date: 25 June 2018 07:38 pm (UTC)Examples?
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Date: 25 June 2018 08:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 25 June 2018 06:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 25 June 2018 07:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 25 June 2018 08:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 25 June 2018 07:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 25 June 2018 07:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 25 June 2018 07:55 pm (UTC)ETA: and actually, I found the level of physical detail in the final section unexpected from any source!
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Date: 26 June 2018 03:52 pm (UTC)