Poem by Rupert Chawner Brooke

The Life Beyond

   He wakes, who never thought to wake again,
    Who held the end was Death.  He opens eyes
   Slowly, to one long livid oozing plain
    Closed down by the strange eyeless heavens.  He lies;
    And waits; and once in timeless sick surmise
   Through the dead air heaves up an unknown hand,
   Like a dry branch.  No life is in that land,
    Himself not lives, but is a thing that cries;
   An unmeaning point upon the mud; a speck
    Of moveless horror; an Immortal One
   Cleansed of the world, sentient and dead; a fly
    Fast-stuck in grey sweat on a corpse's neck.

   I thought when love for you died, I should die.
   It's dead.  Alone, most strangely, I live on.

1. The Jolly Company
2. The Great Lover
3. The Funeral of Youth: Threnody
4. On the Death of Smet-Smet, the Hippopotamus-Goddess
5. The Dance

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