d-brutalized of us,--can
become poets too. For I hold that any man searching his memory for the
things that from earliest days have given him most delight, and
sincerely recording them, not necessarily with verbal garniture at all,
is while he does so a poet. A good deal of Whitman is little else but
such catalogues; and Whitman was a great poet. The effort (even without
the reward of this not-always-desired label) is worth making, because
(and this is where the poetry comes in) it forces one to visit the past
and dwell again in the ways of pleasantness before the world was too
much with us and life's hand had begun to press heavily: most of such
loves as Rupert Brooke recalls having their roots in our childhood.
Hence such poetry as we shall make cannot be wholly reading without
tears.

I find that on my list of loves scents would take a very important
place--the scent of gorse warmed by the sun coming almost first, gorse
blossoms rubbed in the hand and then crushed against the face, geranium
leaves, the leaves of the lemon verbena, the scent of pine trees, the
scent of unlit cigars, the scent of cigarette smoke blown my way from a
distance, the scent of coffee as it arrives from the grocer's (see what
a poet I am!), the scent of the underside of those little cushions of
moss which come away so easily in the woods, the scent of lilies of the
valley, the scent of oatcake for cattle, the scent of lilac, and, for
reasons, above all perhaps the scent of a rubbish fire in the garden.

Rupert Brooke mentions the feel of things. Among the loves of the sense
of touch I should include smooth dried beans, purple and spotted, and
horse-chestnuts, warm and polished by being kept in the pocket, and
ptarmigan's feet, and tortoiseshell spoons for tea-caddies. And among
sounds, first and foremost is the sound of a carriage and pair, but very
high in position is that rare ecstasy, the distant drum and panpipes of
the Punch and Judy. Do they play the panpipes still, I wonder. And how
should I behave if I heard them round the corner? Should I run? I hope
so. Scent, sound, touch, and sight. Sight? Here the range is too vast,
and yet here, perhaps, the act of memory leads to the best poetry of
all. For to enumerate one's favourite sights--always, as Rupert Brooke
may be said to have done, although not perhaps consciously, in the mood
of one who is soon to lose the visible world for ever--is to become, no
matter how humble the list, a psal