| Rupert Brooke (1887–1915). Collected Poems. 1916. |
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| I. 1905–1908 |
| 17. The Beginning |
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| SOME day I shall rise and leave my friends | |
| And seek you again through the world’s far ends, | |
| You whom I found so fair | |
| (Touch of your hands and smell of your hair!), | |
| My only god in the days that were. | 5 |
| My eager feet shall find you again, | |
| Though the sullen years and the mark of pain | |
| Have changed you wholly; for I shall know | |
| (How could I forget having loved you so?), | |
| In the sad half-light of evening, | 10 |
| The face that was all my sunrising. | |
| So then at the ends of the earth I’ll stand | |
| And hold you fiercely be either hand, | |
| And seeing your age and ashen hair | |
| I’ll curse the thing that once you were, | 15 |
| Because it is changed and pale and old | |
| (Lips that were scarlet, hair that was gold!), | |
| And I loved you before you were old and wise, | |
| When the flame of youth was strong in your eyes, | |
| —And my heart is sick with memories. | 20 |
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