Source: File: Rupert
Brooke in uniform.jpg, 2015. From Rupert
Brooke War Hero? [online] Available at: <https://mgdbb.wordpress.com/tag/rupert-brooke/>
[Accessed: 24 April 2015].
Source: File: Grave of Rupert
Brooke on the Greek island of Skyros.jpg, 2015. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [online]
Available at: <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:P8170206.JPG#/media/File:P8170206.JPG
> [Accessed: 24 April 2015].
The call for
Gallipoli had come to the fleet,
harboured about Trebuki Bay of Skyros;
Where Asquith
joined Brown in the news
That Lieutenant
Rupert Brooke had died.
With the man's
temperature falling faster,
The two men turned
to walking - in their
Talking they
believed Brooke would not
Want a sea burial
- then what to do?
The French
Hospital ship was bound
For the port of
Asia - clearly, if left abroad
The poet's body
might never be claimed -
The decision was
to let him rest on Skyros.
That night, they
organised what needed
To be done - 7p.m.
Brown, Freyberg, along
With Lister formed a party onto the island,
Choosing where
Brooke had once rested.
That place where
Brooke had declared
A feeling of
peace - below twelve olive
trees that
overhung, where they marked
his grave - they began to dig the space.
Aboard ship the
French formed on a upper
Deck, a rectangle
of palm trees and placed
The box there,
under an English flag, to use
A cauterizing
iron to carve his name and date.
When dressed in his
uniform, Brooke's coffin
Carried his holster
pistol and pith helmet -
As twelve officers
from the Grantully Castle
Accompanied the
coffin, upon Quilter's boat.
Beneath a enclosing
darkness, the procession
Of boats made for the
shore; under a cloudy
Moon came Australian
bearers, as men held
Lamps to mark their way over a rocky inland.
They carried Brooke
slowly, taking two hours
Over less than a
mile 11 p.m. a slow lantern
Marked approach, of
a hurriedly made cross -
As the bearers
and party made the final steps.
They lowered him on
a bed of olive sprigs
And flowering
sages - a lifting breeze stirred
About the foliage,
as the Chaplain read out
The English service; three volleys sounded.
The shots startled
nearby goats - the echoes
Slowly died as the last post drifted into night.
With the parade
gone, friends remained and
Laid pink and
white marble for a grave cairn.
By a penciled Greek
epitaph and a cairn upon
The place, an
Aegean island gave fitting tribute
For an English poet - to lay amid shepherds,
Grazing goats, in a
shadow of Mount Olympus.
The friends left,
having done their sad duty -
To have buried a
symbol of their generation.
In their sense of
loss, the Dardanelles called
Them from the poet
left under an Aegean sky.
by Jamie Mann.
Hassall, C.,1996. Rupert
Brooke: A Biography. London. Faber and Faber. Ch XIII.
Source: File: Rupert
Brooke. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia. [online]
Available at: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Brooke> [Accessed: 24 April
2015].
Mann, J., 2015. 100 years Ago - Poems by Jamie Mann. [letter] (Personal
communication, 24 April 2015).
#WW1 #WW1centenary #GreatWar #WW1poem #GreatWar #WW1centenary
#worldwarone #worldwaroneremembered #WW1RupertBrooke
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