Not with Vain Tears
NOT with vain tears, when we’re beyond the sun,
We’ll beat on the substantial doors, nor tread
Those dusty highroads of the aimless dead,
Plaintive for Earth; but rather turn and run
Down some close-covered byway of the air,
Some low, sweet alley between wind and wind,
Stoop under faint gleams, thread the shadows, find
Some whispering, ghost-forgotten nook, and there
Spend in pure converse our eternal day;
Think each in each, immediately wise;
Learn all we lacked before; hear, know and say
What this tumultuous body now denies;
And feel, who have laid our groping hands away;
And see, no longer blinded by our eyes.
All of Rupert Brooke’s work has been collected and issued, a rich though slender sheaf. The book is fervently commended to people whose own souls are in the key that responds to notes so spiritually fine and clear as those he sounds in all his lines.
“But a Short Time to Live” was written by Serg’t Leslie Coulson, whose “little hour” came to an end at Arras, in France, October 7, 1916: