From the archive, 27 April 1915: Editorial: A Poet’s Death

The death of Rupert Brooke leaves us with a miserable sense of waste and futility, yet it is impossible to withhold even the most precious personalities

The Soldier, by Rupert Brooke

First world war poet Rupert Brooke, who died in April 1915. Photograph: PA

Monday 27 April 2015 - The Guardian

The news that RUPERT BROOKE has died on a French hospital ship and been buried at Lemnos will bring deep regret to those who care for literature and will touch those who only knew him as a gallant young poet gone to the war. He was not a warlike poet, but one of niceties and delicate apprehensions, of moods and impressions; with sympathetic fancifulness he would penetrate to the consciousness of a fish in the cool stream. It is difficult to imagine the process of adjustment by which such a man would fit himself for the savage blatancies, the shrieks and roars of war, and hardly less difficult, perhaps, to associate him with all the straitnesses of uniform and drill. 

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