Rupert Brooke (1887–1915)

I DREAMT I was in love again

With the One Before the Last,

And smiled to greet the pleasant pain

Of that innocent young past.

But I jump’d to feel how sharp had been

The pain when it did live,

How the faded dreams of Nineteen-ten

Were Hell in Nineteen-five.

The boy’s woe was as keen and clear,

The boy’s love just as true,

And the One Before the Last, my dear,

Hurt quite as much as you.

*****

Sickly I ponder’d how the lover

Wrongs the unanswering tomb,

And sentimentalizes over

What earn’d a better doom.

Gently he tombs the poor dim last time,

Strews pinkish dust above,

And sighs, ‘The dear dead boyish pastime;

But this—ah, God!—is Love!’

—Better oblivion hide dead true loves,

Better the night enfold,

Than men, to eke the praise of new loves,

Should lie about the old!

*****

Oh! bitter thoughts I had in plenty.

But here ’s the worst of it—

I shall forget, in Nineteen-twenty,

You ever hurt a bit!