Skinny-dipping with Rupert Brooke, Sturdy as a Marlowe Stanza or Miltonic Ones, in a Night-time Cambridgeshire Pool

Skinny-dipping with Rupert Brooke, Sturdy as a Marlowe Stanza or Miltonic Ones, in a Night-time Cambridgeshire Pool

Virginia Woolf  had seen him.  She had seen

Him whole.  She saw his soul, good-hearted, kind,

Substantial.  She had seen him leaping, clean,

More clean than moonlight, and how God designed

His character and self, as sane as days

In springtime.  She had seen that he had force

Not only in his diving but the blaze

Of body, perfect, as it found its course

And arc to midnight water, saw the gift

Of him to people in his ways.  We call

Our minds to wonder if her mental shift

To such high praise was caused by his slim fall

To rape the pool with beauty . . . or if she

Had seen the truth by God’s pronounced decree.

Phillip Whidden