English Poetry. Rupert Chawner Brooke. I Said I Splendidly Loved You; It’s Not True. Руперт Брук.

Rupert Chawner Brooke (Руперт Брук)

* * *

                  Sonnet

I said I splendidly loved you; it's not true.
 Such long swift tides stir not a land-locked sea.
On gods or fools the high risk falls -- on you --
 The clean clear bitter-sweet that's not for me.
Love soars from earth to ecstasies unwist.
 Love is flung Lucifer-like from Heaven to Hell.
But -- there are wanderers in the middle mist,
 Who cry for shadows, clutch, and cannot tell
Whether they love at all, or, loving, whom:
 An old song's lady, a fool in fancy dress,
Or phantoms, or their own face on the gloom;
 For love of Love, or from heart's loneliness.
Pleasure's not theirs, nor pain.  They doubt, and sigh,
 And do not love at all.  Of these am I.

Rupert Chawner Brooke’s other poems:

1. The One Before the Last
2. Song (The way of love was thus)
3. The Way That Lovers Use
4. On the Death of Smet-Smet, the Hippopotamus-Goddess
5. The True Beatitude

To the dedicated English version of this website

---