"Clouds" (A Poem)

The concept of life after death has been a hotly contested idea for millennia and the debate has emerged in all corners of human society, from philosophy and religion to art and literature. Rupert Brooke’s poem “Clouds,” in turn, is just one of the countless voices to join the conversation, with the author ruminating on the afterlife of the dead and envisioning them watching the minutia of everyday life as a ceaseless parade of future generations propel humanity forward after their passing.[1]

Down the blue night the unending columns press

In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow,

Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snow

Up to the white moon’s hidden loveliness.

Some pause in their grave wandering comradeless,

And turn with profound gesture vague and slow,

As who would pray good for the world, but know

Their benediction empty as they bless.

They say that the Dead die not, but remain

Near to the rich heirs of their grief and mirth.

I think they ride the calm mid-heaven, as these,

In wise majestic melancholy train,

And watch the moon, and the still-raging seas,

And men, coming and going on the earth.[2]

Works Referenced

Brooke, Rupert. “Clouds.” The Poems of Rupert Brooke. New York: Dover Publications, 2020. 90.

Schoenberg, Thomas, and Lawrence Trudeau, eds. Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Vol. 174. Detroit, MI: Gale Research Company, 2006.
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[1] Schoenberg and Trudeau, 77.
[2] Brooke, 90.