Poem by Rupert Chawner Brooke

Second Best

   Here in the dark, O heart;
   Alone with the enduring Earth, and Night,
   And Silence, and the warm strange smell of clover;
   Clear-visioned, though it break you; far apart
   From the dead best, the dear and old delight;
   Throw down your dreams of immortality,
   O faithful, O foolish lover!
   Here's peace for you, and surety; here the one
   Wisdom -- the truth! -- "All day the good glad sun
   Showers love and labour on you, wine and song;
   The greenwood laughs, the wind blows, all day long
   Till night."  And night ends all things.
                                             Then shall be
   No lamp relumed in heaven, no voices crying,
   Or changing lights, or dreams and forms that hover!
   (And, heart, for all your sighing,
   That gladness and those tears are over, over. . . .)

   And has the truth brought no new hope at all,
   Heart, that you're weeping yet for Paradise?
   Do they still whisper, the old weary cries?
   "'MID YOUTH AND SONG, FEASTING AND CARNIVAL,
   THROUGH LAUGHTER, THROUGH THE ROSES, AS OF OLD
   COMES DEATH, ON SHADOWY AND RELENTLESS FEET,
   DEATH, UNAPPEASABLE BY PRAYER OR GOLD;
   DEATH IS THE END, THE END!"
   Proud, then, clear-eyed and laughing, go to greet
   Death as a friend!

   Exile of immortality, strongly wise,
   Strain through the dark with undesirous eyes
   To what may lie beyond it.  Sets your star,
   O heart, for ever!  Yet, behind the night,
   Waits for the great unborn, somewhere afar,
   Some white tremendous daybreak.  And the light,
   Returning, shall give back the golden hours,
   Ocean a windless level, Earth a lawn
   Spacious and full of sunlit dancing-places,
   And laughter, and music, and, among the flowers,
   The gay child-hearts of men, and the child-faces
   O heart, in the great dawn!

1. The Great Lover
2. The Jolly Company
3. Fragment on Painters
4. Sonnet Reversed
5. The One Before the Last

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