Literary Birthday – 3 August – Rupert Brooke

Rupert Brooke was born on 3 August 1887 and died on 23 April 1915.

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.
~The Soldier

Rupert Brooke Quotes

1. There are only three things in the world, one is to read poetry, another is to write poetry, and the best of all is to live poetry. (The Collected Poems of Rupert Brook: With a Memoir, 1918)
2. I have need to busy my heart with quietude. (Delphi Complete Works of Rupert Brooke (Illustrated))
3. Youth is stranger than fiction.
4. Store up reservoirs of calm and content and draw on them at later moments when the source isn’t there, but the need is very great. (Friends and Apostles: The Correspondence of Rupert Brooke and James Strachey, 1905-1914)
5. I know what things are good: friendship and work and conversation. These I shall have. (Rupert Brooke: A Reappraisal and Selection from His Writings)
6. A book may be compared to your neighbour: if it be good, it cannot last too long; if bad, you cannot get rid of it too early.

Rupert Brooke was an English poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written during World War I, especially The Soldier. He is the author of 1914, and other poems. Brooke made friends among the Bloomsbury group of writers. He also belonged to the Georgian Poets and was one of the most important of the Dymock poets, associated with the Gloucestershire village of Dymock where he spent some time before the war. He died in 1915. On 11 November 1985, Brooke was among 16 First World War poets commemorated on a slate monument unveiled in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.

Source for Image: From The Collected Poems of Rupert Brook: With a Memoir, 1918

by Amanda Patterson

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