| Rupert Brooke (1887–1915). Collected Poems. 1916. |
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| II. 1908–1911 |
| 13. The Life Beyond |
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| HE wakes, who never thought to wake again, | |
| Who held the end was Death. He opens eyes | |
| Slowly, to one long livid oozing plain | |
| Closed down by the strange eyeless heavens. | |
| He lies; | 5 |
| And waits; and once in timeless sick surmise | |
| Through the dead air heaves up an unknown hand, | |
| Like a dry branch. No life is in that land, | |
| Himself not lives, but is a thing that cries; | |
| An unmeaning point upon the mud; a speck | 10 |
| Of moveless horror; an Immortal One | |
| Cleansed of the world, sentient and dead; a fly | |
| Fast-stuck in grey sweat on a corpse’s neck. | |
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| I though when love for you died, I should die. | |
| It’s dead. Alone, most strangely, I live on. | 15 |
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