Royston which I have bicycled hundreds of tunes.  One sees the little inns along the way—­the Waggon and Horses, the Plough, the King’s Arms—­and the recurring blue signboard Fine Royston Ales (the Royston brewery being famous in those parts).  Behind the fun there shines Brooke’s passionate devotion to the soil and soul of England which was to reach its final expression so tragically soon.  And even behind this the immortal questions of youth which have no country and no clime—­

    Say, is there Beauty yet to find? 
    And Certainty? and Quiet kind?

No lover of England, certainly no lover of Cambridge, is likely to forget the Grantchester poem.  But knowing Brooke only by that, one may perhaps be excused for having merely ticketed him as one of the score of young varsity poets whom Oxford and Cambridge had graduated in the past decade and who are all doing fine and promising work.  Even though he tarried here in the United States ("El Cuspidorado,” as he wittily observed) and many hold precious the memory of his vivid mind and flashing face, to most of us he was totally unknown.  Then came the War; he took part in the unsuccessful Antwerp Expedition; and while in training for the AEgean campaign he wrote the five sonnets entitled “1914”.  I do not know exactly when they were written or where first published.  Their great popularity began when the Dean of St. Paul’s quoted from them in a sermon on Easter Day, 1915, alluding to them as the finest expression of the English spirit that the War had called forth.  They came to New York in the shape of clippings from the London Times.  No one could read the matchless sonnet: 

    “If I should die, think only this of me: 
      That there’s some corner of a foreign field
    That is for ever England.”

and not be thrilled to the quick.  A country doctor in Ohio to whom I sent a copy of the sonnet wrote “I cannot read it without tears.”  This was poetry indeed; like the Scotchman and his house, we kent it by the biggin o’t.  I suppose many another stranger must have done as I did:  wrote to Brooke to express gratitude for the perfect words.  But he had sailed for the Mediterranean long before.  Presently came a letter from London saying that he had died on the very day of my letter—­April 23, 1915.  He died on board the French hospital ship Duguay-Trouin, on Shakespeare’s birthday, in his 28th year.  One gathers from the log of the hospital-ship that the cause of his death was a malignant ulcer, due to the sting of some venomous fly.  He had been weakened by a previous touch of sunstroke.

A description of the burial is given in “Memorials of Old Rugbeians Who Fell in the Great War.”  It vividly recalls Stevenson’s last journey to the Samoan mountain top which Brooke himself had so recently visited.  The account was written by one of Brooke’s comrades, who has since been killed in action: