| Rupert Brooke (1887–1915). Collected Poems. 1916. |
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| V. The South Seas |
| 11. Hauntings |
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| IN the grey tumult of these after years | |
| Oft silence falls; the incessant wranglers part; | |
| And less-than-echoes of remembered tears | |
| Hush all the loud confusion of the heart; | |
| And a shade, through the toss’d ranks of mirth and crying | 5 |
| Hungers, and pains, and each dull passionate mood,— | |
| Quite lost, and all but all forgot, undying, | |
| Comes back the ecstasy of your quietude. | |
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| So a poor ghost, beside his misty streams, | |
| Is haunted by strange doubts, evasive dreams, | 10 |
| Hints of a pre-Lethean life, of men, | |
| Stars, rocks, and flesh, things unintelligible, | |
| And light on waving grass, he knows not when, | |
And feet that ran, but where, he cannot tell.
THE PACIFIC, 1914. | |
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