Lord Byron, Rupert Brooke, Denham Russell-Smith, and Virginia Woolf: Skin and Dipping
Lord Byron
Rupert Brooke
Two poets swam a century apart
Near Cambridge in a pool. They both loved sex
As well as swimming. Byron in his heart
And bed made certain parts of boys convex
And Rupert Brooke inside his house beside
The pool took Denham Russell-Smith to bed.
This Brooke and Denham had been both allied
In lust since Rugby days. At last they shed
Restraint between Grantchester’s sheets. The pool
Is also where Virginia Stephen took his dare
And swam “quite naked” with young Rupert, cool
Together in its night-time waters where
Who knows happened there or on the bank,
The novelist and poet fucking, rank?
~ Phillip Whidden