At the onset of spring, here is a suitable poem for the season by Rupert Brooke.

Song
“Oh! Love,” they said, “is King of Kings,
And Triumph is his crown.
Earth fades in flame before his wings,
And Sun and Moon bow down.” —
But that, I knew, would never do;
And Heaven is all too high.
So whenever I meet a Queen, I said,
I will not catch her eye.

“Oh! Love,” they said, and “Love,” they said,
“The gift of Love is this;
A crown of thorns about thy head,
And vinegar to thy kiss!” —
But Tragedy is not for me;
And I’m content to be gay.
So whenever I spied a Tragic Lady,
I went another way.

And so I never feared to see
You wander down the street,
Or come across the fields to me
On ordinary feet.
For what they’d never told me of,
And what I never knew;
It was that all the time, my love,
Love would be merely you.
Rupert Brooke

I like Rupert Brooke’s regular poems, a young man’s poems full of ardent emotions and ideals and dreams such as only a young man can have, poems that are as full of life as their author.

But it is his satirical poems that I love – poems like A Channel passage, Wagner, Menelaus and Helen, all of which hold a mirror to the grim aspects of the world. And Sonnet reversed, what a cynical ode to life.  Poems that reveal how Rupert Brooke was aware of the illusions of the world, even as he celebrated those very illusions in his verse.