| Rupert Brooke (1887–1915). Collected Poems. 1916. |
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| III. Experiments |
| 2. Choriambics—II |
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| HERE the flame that was ash, shrine that was void, lost in the haunted wood, | |
| I have tended and loved, year upon year, I in the solitude | |
| Waiting, quiet and glad-eyed in the dark, knowing that once a gleam | |
| Glowed and went through the wood. Still I abode strong in a golden dream, | |
| Unrecaptured. | 5 |
| For I, I that had faith, knew that a face would glance | |
| One day, white in the dim woods, and a voice call, and a radiance | |
| Fill the grove, and the fire suddenly leap… and, in the heart of it, | |
| End of labouring, you! Therefore I kept ready the altar, lit | |
| The flame, burning apart. | 10 |
| Face of my dreams vainly in vision white | |
| Gleaming down to me, lo! hopeless I rise now. For about midnight | |
| Whispers grew through the wood suddenly, strange cries in the boughs above | |
| Grated, cries like a laugh. Silent and black then through the sacred grove | |
| Great birds flew, as a dream, troubling the leaves, passing at length. | 15 |
| I knew | |
| Long expected and long loved, that afar, God of the dim wood, you | |
| Somewhere lay, as a child sleeping, a child suddenly reft from mirth, | |
| White and wonderful yet, white in your youth, stretched upon foreign earth, | |
| God, immortal and dead! | 20 |
| Therefore I go; never to rest, or win | |
| Peace, and worship of you more, and the dumb wood and the shrine therein. | |
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