Wince
“Hynes succeeds in reducing Brooke to two pitying, scathing lines: ‘Poor Brooke: it is his destiny to live as a
supremely poetical figure, shirt open and hair too long and profile perfect – a figure that appeals to that vast
majority that doesn’t read poetry, but knows what a poet should look like. But as a poet he is not immortal – he is only dead. . .’ ”
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song . . . and for ever young
. . . Forever England
The situation might have been far worse.
Brooke might have been an ugly little wimp,
Poetic as a Walter Mitty. Verse
By Rupert might have been forgotten, limp
As mashed potatoes when they’re warm. His shirt
Instead could be high-buttoned up and hide
An unpoetic chest, his hair too curt
Like most young men’s, his forehead, low, astride
Two boring eyes and prose-like cheeks (instead
Of noble wide-boned beauty) and a face
In profile like an E. M. Forster head,
No face as graceful as a Grecian vase.
His readers may not know his poems well,
But they know him. The rest can go to hell.
~ Phillip Whidden