The Poetry Corner

The True Beatitude (Bouts-Rimes)

By Rupert Brooke

They say when the Great Prompter's hand shall ring Down the last curtain upon earth and sea, All the Good Mimes will have eternity To praise their Author, worship love and sing; Or to the walls of Heaven wandering Look down on those damned for a fretful d----, Mock them (all theologians agree On this reward for virtue), laugh, and fling New sulphur on the sin-incarnadined . . . Ah, Love! still temporal, and still atmospheric, Teleologically unperturbed, We share a peace by no divine divined, An earthly garden hidden from any cleric, Untrodden of God, by no Eternal curbed.