Rupert Brooke (1887–1915). Collected Poems. 1916.
II. 1908191112. The Jolly Company
T
I envied, straying late and lonely;
And cried upon their revelry:
“O white companionship! You only
In love, in faith unbroken dwell,
Friends radiant and inseparable!”
And merry comrades (even so God out of Heaven may laugh to see The happy crowds; and never know That in his lone obscure distress Each walketh in a wilderness). And loved them, who, with lonely light, In empty infinite spaces dwell, Disconsolate. For, all the night, I heard the thin gnat-voices cry, Star to faint star, across the sky.