Waxing Poetic: Beauty and Beauty by Rupert Brooke

  
     Rupert Brooke(1887-1915) was an English poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the WWI.  He was also known for his boyish good looks, which prompted the Irish poet William Butler Yeats to describe him as "the handsomest young man in England". 
     In 2000, the British Library unearthed letters from Brooke to a previously unknown lover, the artist Phyllis Gardner (I can't help but think of A. S. Byatt's Possession).  Gardner is said to have seen him for the first time and when he ran his fingers through his mop of "silky golden hair" she was transfixed and couldn't get the image of the young man out of her head.  The letters document their brief but intense relationship.  Their relationship deteriorated when Gardner refused further intimacy without further commitment from Brooke.  This is detailed in an article published in the Telegraph, here.  Brooke died in the war and was buried in Greece and Gardner never married.
     Gardner's painting Fairy Gold is a self-portrait symbolizing her love for Brooke or their relationship as fairy gold.

     Brooke's poem, Beauty and Beauty, was written for Gardner and was inspired by a moonlight tryst (sans clothes) that they had. 

 Beauty and Beauty

When Beauty and Beauty meet
All naked, fair to fair,
The earth is crying-sweet,
And scattering-bright the air,
Eddying, dizzying, closing round,
With soft and drunken laughter;
Veiling all that may befall
After -- after --

Where Beauty and Beauty met,
Earth's still a-tremble there,
And winds are scented yet,
And memory-soft the air,
Bosoming, folding glints of light,
And shreds of shadowy laughter;
Not the tears that fill the years
After -- after --