Below we give a few lines from “The Old Vicarage” by Rupert Brooke. We hope the readers would themselves complete the reading of the illustrious poem by a master of English poetry.


Editor.



(Café des Westens, Berlin, May 1912)

JUST now the lilac is in bloom,
All before my little room;
And in my flower-beds, I think,
Smile the carnation and the pink;
And down the borders, well I know,
The poppy and the pansy blow…
Oh! there the chestnuts, summer through,
Beside the river make for you
A tunnel of green gloom, and sleep
Deeply above; and green and deep 10
The stream mysterious glides beneath,
Green as a dream and deep as death.
—Oh, damn! I know it! and I know
How the May fields all golden show,
And when the day is young and sweet,
Gild gloriously the bare feet
That run to bathe…
Du lieber Gott!

Here am I, sweating, sick, and hot,
And there the shadowed waters fresh 20
Lean up to embrace the naked flesh.
Temperamentvoll German Jews
Drink beer around;—and there the dews
Are soft beneath a morn of gold.
Here tulips bloom as they are told;
Unkempt about those hedges blows
An English unofficial rose;
And there the unregulated sun
Slopes down to rest when day is done,
And wakes a vague unpunctual star, 30
A slippered Hesper; and there are
Meads towards Haslingfield and Coton
Where das Betreten’s not verboten.