Audiobook · read by volunteers
Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke
Rupert Brooke (1887–1915)
Read by Graham Redman · 94 chapters · 3 h 35
About the book
Rupert Brooke wrote some of the best-loved English poems of the early twentieth century, and this collection gathers them in a generous reading of more than ninety short pieces. Here are the War Sonnets, with “The Soldier” among them, but also the poems of peace: the sunlit nostalgia of “The Old Vicarage, Grantchester”, the rapture of “The Great Lover”, and a long run of sonnets, lyrics and playful, sometimes biting verses on love, jealousy, travel and the sea. Brooke could be tender, sardonic and startlingly physical within a single page, and his idealism is never far from irony. Because the poems are brief, the recording invites you to dip in at any point: one chapter is only a few minutes long, and each one has its own mood. A single voice carries you through them all, from the first lines to the last. Listen once and you may well return to your favourites.
Introduction
Rupert Brooke was born in 1887 and died in 1915, at the age of twenty-seven, on his way to the war. That short life left a body of verse that, for many readers, still stands for a whole generation of young Englishmen. He was admired as much for his looks as for his writing, and the poet William Butler Yeats is reported to have called him the handsomest young man in England, a remark that followed his name for decades.
His reputation rests above all on the sonnets he wrote as the First World War began, in which “The Soldier” remains the most quoted. Yet this collection shows how much else there was. “The Old Vicarage, Grantchester”, written far from home, is a comic and homesick portrait of the English countryside; “The Great Lover” is a list of small joys, the things a person learns to cherish. Elsewhere you will meet poems that are cynical, odd, mocking or frankly sensual, and the book reaches well beyond the image of the noble young soldier.
The recording offers 94 short chapters, one for each poem or sonnet, for a total of about three and a half hours, read by a single LibriVox volunteer, Graham Redman. It suits listening in small doses. Today, a century on, these poems are worth hearing for their music and their mix of confidence and doubt, and as a reminder of what was lost with so many young writers. The poems are short enough to be heard again and again, and a second hearing often brings out a rhythm or an image that the first one missed. They make good company for a walk or a quiet hour, and they offer a vivid glimpse of the mood in England just before the war changed everything.
Public domain
Rupert Brooke died in 1915: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text