To come, then, to art, which is above personality, what of that? Art is,
at most, but the mortal relic of genius; yet it is true of it that,
like Ozymandias' statue, "nothing beside remains". Rupert Brooke was
already perfected in verbal and stylistic execution. He might have grown
in variety, richness and significance, in scope and in detail, no doubt;
but as an artisan in metrical words and pauses, he was past apprenticeship.
He was still a restless experimenter, but in much he was a master.
In the brief stroke of description, which he inherited from
his early attachment to the concrete; in the rush of words,
especially verbs; in the concatenation of objects, the flow of things
'en masse' through his verse, still with the impulse of "the bright speed"
he had at the source; in his theatrical impersonation of abstractions,
as in "The Funeral of Youth", where for once the abstract and the concrete
are happily fused; -- in all these there are the elements, and in the last
there is the perfection, of mastery. For one thing, he knew how to end.
It is with him a dramatic secret. The brief stroke does this work
time and time again in his verse, nowhere better than in
"at dead YOUTH's funeral:" all were there, --
"All, except only LOVE -- LOVE had died long ago."