Poem by Rupert Chawner Brooke

The Jolly Company

   The stars, a jolly company,
    I envied, straying late and lonely;
   And cried upon their revelry:
    "O white companionship!  You only
   In love, in faith unbroken dwell,
   Friends radiant and inseparable!"

   Light-heart and glad they seemed to me
    And merry comrades (EVEN SO
   GOD OUT OF HEAVEN MAY LAUGH TO SEE
    THE HAPPY CROWDS; AND NEVER KNOW
   THAT IN HIS LONE OBSCURE DISTRESS
   EACH WALKETH IN A WILDERNESS).

   But I, remembering, pitied well
    And loved them, who, with lonely light,
   In empty infinite spaces dwell,
    Disconsolate.  For, all the night,
   I heard the thin gnat-voices cry,
   Star to faint star, across the sky.

1. The Dance
2. The One Before the Last
3. The Great Lover
4. Song (All suddenly the wind comes soft)
5. The Funeral of Youth: Threnody

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