Grantchester_, reprinted in Heffer's
_Cambridge Poems_, first fell under my eye during the winter of 1913-14.

Grantchester is a tiny hamlet just outside Cambridge; set in the meadows
along the Cam or Granta (the earlier name), and next door to the
Trumpington of Chaucer's "The Reeve's Tale." All that Cambridge country
is flat and comparatively uninteresting; patchworked with chalky fields
bright with poppies; slow, shallow streams drifting between pollard
willows; it is the beginning of the fen district, and from the brow of
the Royston downs (thirteen miles away) it lies as level as a table-top
with the great chapel of King's clear against the sky. It is the
favourite lament of Cambridge men that their "_Umgebung_" is so dull and
monotonous compared with the rolling witchery of Oxfordshire.

But to the young Cantab sitting over his beer at the Cafe des Westens in
Berlin, the Cambridge villages seemed precious and fair indeed.
Balancing between genuine homesickness for the green pools of the Cam,
and a humorous whim in his rhymed comment on the outlying villages,
Brooke wrote the Grantchester poem; and probably when the fleeting pang
of nostalgia was over enjoyed the evening in Berlin hugely. But the
verses are more than of merely passing interest. To one who knows that
neighbourhood the picture is cannily vivid. To me it brings back with
painful intensity the white winding road from Cambridge to 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 vivi