“These I Have Loved”: Appreciating Brooke’s The Great Lover Amidst Covid Crisis

Despite the abundance of dystopian literature around us, not many of us expected that the world as we knew it would come to change with Covid-19. Lockdowns after lockdowns, we are where we are now: with thwarted plans, some of us losing our loved ones or acquaintances to the pandemic, all the while learning to make the best out of this shared ordeal.

To state all the innumerable things that have come to change isn’t plausible. However, if we are to list the things that we have missed the most following the incursion of the virus, our lists won’t be as varied. We miss the littlest things that we’ve taken for granted: the embrace of a friend, the greeting of a handshake, the fellowship of kindred souls, the freedom of merely being.

With these in mind, an appreciation of Rupert Brooke’s poem, The Great Lover (1915) wakes one up to look at the world from a different perspective. The British soldier-poet has been immortalised by his lines in The Soldier (1914): If I should die,think only this of me:/ That there’s some corner of a foreign field/ That is forever England.

What had moved the poet, who lived to see just twenty seven years of the world, to claim that he had “filled his days/ So proudly” such assuredly as he has in the poem will be preposterous for us to wonder. Yet the poem itself, though often read in the light of the poet boasting about his life, aptly reveals why it is imperative for him to call himself “the great lover.”

The poem, written in the tradition of Georgian poetry, is basically a lengthy list of the things that the highly sensuous poet has learnt to love and appreciate: companionship, nature, cycle of life and yes, the littlest mundane objects.

In the second stanza of the poem which runs into a lengthy forty seven lines, the poet meticulously gathers the things that add to his life, saying:

These I have loved:
White plates and cups, clean-gleaming,
Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust;
Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust
Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food;
Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood;
And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers;
And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours,
Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon;
Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon
Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss
Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is
Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen
Unpassioned beauty of a great machine;
The benison of hot water; furs to touch;
The good smell of old clothes; and other such—
The comfortable smell of friendly fingers,
Hair’s fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers
About dead leaves and last year’s ferns….
Dear names,
And thousand others throng to me! Royal flames;
Sweet water’s dimpling laugh from tap or spring;
Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing:
Voices in laughter, too; and body’s pain,
Soon turned to peace; and the deep-panting train;
Firm sands; the little dulling edge of foam
That browns and dwindles as the wave goes home;
And washen stones, gay for an hour; the cold
Graveness of iron; moist black earthen mould;
Sleep; and high places; footprints in the dew;
And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new;
And new-peeled sticks; and shining pools on grass;—
All these have been my loves. And these shall pass.
Whatever passes not, in the great hour,
Nor all my passion, all my prayers, have power
To hold them with me through the gate of Death.
They’ll play deserter, turn with the traitor breath,
Break the high bond we made, and sell Love’s trust
And sacramented covenant to the dust.
—Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake,
And give what’s left of love again, and make
New friends, now strangers….
But the best I’ve known,
Stays here, and changes, breaks, grows old, is blown
About the winds of the world, and fades from brains
Of living men, and dies.
Nothing remains.

These lines are comparatively different from the first stanza, wherein Brooke revels in his interpersonal relationship with his fellow men. Should claim be made that there is a faint note of obligation while immortalizing the people he loves, the description of his pyschological state maybe interpreted as a resulting stress in his interpersonal relationships, which the poet has but embraced fully.

In the second stanza, however, the poet is seemingly more at ease as he describes the mundane objects that add to his well-being. There is no note of obligation as he lists them one after the other; most probably without any order of preference but as they appear to his thoughts while writing them down.

This second stanza is worth remembering, for herein is everything that we’ve taken for granted and never really appreciated although they’ve added much to our lives. Perhaps it’s easy to ignore inanimate things for the very reason that their presence don’t really make us feel obliged to notice them. But Brooke sees differently. He acknowledges these inanimate objects and nature around him; and wishes to immortalize them alongwith people that he loves. And how beautifully done! For who sees dimples in the movement of water but a poet with the keenest observation? Who ever imagines the stones lining the ocean to be feeling the heat of the sun and bask in the temporary coolness that the waves provide them? Who marvels at newly peeled sticks and “the cold/Graveness of iron”?

The Great Lover is much more than a soldier-poet penning down the myriad things that he feels have elevated him to the status of being a “great lover.” More than anything, it is a poem asking its readers to rethink about their values and learn to appreciate the littlest things in life as well.

The poet knows that all these things that he has loved will falter and fail him eventually. Not even his absolute faith would keep him from the gates of death. Despite his attempt to immortalize his loves through his verse, he comes to the inevitable truth: “Nothing remains.”

Perhaps it is this understanding, that nothing remains, which makes the poet sensitive towards life. Perhaps this is why, he says that “(his) night shall be remembered for a star/
That outshone all the suns of all men’s days.” If there’s one thing to take from Brooke’s Great Lover is his attitude towards life. While counting all his blessings, he doesn’t downplay the other side of life:

The pain, the calm, and the astonishment,
Desire illimitable, and still content,
And all dear names men use, to cheat despair,
For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear
Our hearts at random down the dark of life.

Knowing how the cycle of life brings in the darkness and light, the poet has learnt to accept both of them and has learnt to make the best out of every situation that life throws him in. This is where the poet has transcended over time and experiences, and this is exactly where the poem becomes an encouraging poem, asking us to rethink our core values and learn to appreciate the smallest blessings in life for come what may, nothing really remains.