queenkaiser's review against another edition
2.0
Some lovely lines and stanzas scattered throughout but overall pretty dull.
maplessence's review against another edition
3.0
I want to think about both my rating & review on this one!
It's ANZAC Day tomorrow & my husband & I used to read poetry by Brooke, Wilfred Owen & Siegfried Sassoon on this day - don't know why we stopped. & maybe I should have gone for a collection of WW1 poems because it's hard to believe the beautiful & conflicted young man
who gave us The Soldier (If I should die, think only this of me...) also wrote dreck like this (a fragment from The Great Lover)
Yeesh.
3* seems fair.
Lest we forget.
It's ANZAC Day tomorrow & my husband & I used to read poetry by Brooke, Wilfred Owen & Siegfried Sassoon on this day - don't know why we stopped. & maybe I should have gone for a collection of WW1 poems because it's hard to believe the beautiful & conflicted young man
who gave us The Soldier (If I should die, think only this of me...) also wrote dreck like this (a fragment from The Great Lover)
I have been so great a lover:filled my days
So proudly with the splendour of Love's praise,
The pain, the calm, and the astonishment,
Desire illimitable,and still content...
Yeesh.
3* seems fair.
Lest we forget.
lokster71's review against another edition
3.0
I picked up this collection as part of my World War One reading, but this isn't really a World War One collection. It features, as part of 1914, the famous "The Soldier" aka "If I should die think only this of me'.
It's interesting that the most famous Brooke lines are parts of longer poems. I've already mentioned "The Soldier" from 1914. And the final few lines of "Granchester":
Say, is there Beauty yet to find?
And Certainty? and Quiet kind?
Deep meadows yet, for to forget
The lies, and truths, and pain?... oh! yet
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?
Which now seem to mark the end of one kind of England.
The poems are fine. They feel Edwardian to me. The language feels self-consciously poetic. They seem to have been written before 1914 mostly. Some in the Pacific and Granchester in Berlin. It did make me realise I know nothing about Rupert Brooke at all apart from where he died and roughly when. This is something I need to deal with.
There were a couple of poems I really liked: "He Wonders Whether To Blame or Praise Her" (which felt like an echo of one of Blake's poems) and "Song".
I've got a fuller collection of Brooke's poetry to read so I'll be interested to see what I think when I get to the end of that.
It's interesting that the most famous Brooke lines are parts of longer poems. I've already mentioned "The Soldier" from 1914. And the final few lines of "Granchester":
Say, is there Beauty yet to find?
And Certainty? and Quiet kind?
Deep meadows yet, for to forget
The lies, and truths, and pain?... oh! yet
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?
Which now seem to mark the end of one kind of England.
The poems are fine. They feel Edwardian to me. The language feels self-consciously poetic. They seem to have been written before 1914 mostly. Some in the Pacific and Granchester in Berlin. It did make me realise I know nothing about Rupert Brooke at all apart from where he died and roughly when. This is something I need to deal with.
There were a couple of poems I really liked: "He Wonders Whether To Blame or Praise Her" (which felt like an echo of one of Blake's poems) and "Song".
I've got a fuller collection of Brooke's poetry to read so I'll be interested to see what I think when I get to the end of that.
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