Rugby Love Reduced to Black and White in Cambridge Love

Rugby Love Reduced to Black and White in Cambridge Love

The love continued into Cambridge days.

One Rugby beauty took another in

A frame and kept him in his room to gaze

At eyes, at stalwart auburn hair, and chin,

Not just in daytime, either, but in nights

Of loneliness without warm flesh and shape

Of truth, “truth beauty.”  Keats had known the heights

Of love frustrated.  Even just the nape

Of  solid neck in strength would likely be

Enough in Rupert’s mind to torture love

Like sweated heart, but then he could not see

From frontal view the shaft that rose above

The back of Charles as Brooke had seen it on

The playing field, that swelling skin of brawn.

Phillip Whidden