Peace – Rupert Brooke

The opening sonnet in the short sequence of poems Brooke wrote under the title ‘1914’, about the outbreak of the First World War, this poem reflects the jingoistic spirit that was prevalent at the beginning of that conflict: Brooke sees the war as his generation’s time to shine.

Of course, the sonnet has ‘not aged well’, as we say now; but there are some who now think Brooke was being ironic in these patriotic poems, so it’s hard to tell what he himself thought. Still, the message of the poem seems to be that, paradoxically, war brings a kind of inner peace – a sense of honour and duty and self-worth – which his generation needed, in ‘a world grown old and cold and weary’.

The poem offers a different take on the idea of ‘peace’ from other poems in this list, and contains the lines:

Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,

Where there’s no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,

Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;

Nothing to shake the laughing heart’s long peace there

But only agony, and that has ending;

And the worst friend and enemy is but Death

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