The waves roll black from the Setting Sun, Waikîkî, O'ahu, Hawai'i, USA

Looking through some of my Hawai'i photos this morning I found this one of the setting sun at Waikîkî beach, Honolulu (taken in the late Autumn 2008). And, yes! a poem popped into my mind by the famed English 'war poet' Rupert Brooke (1887-1915). It is quite romantic as perhaps befits the poet, called by someone "The handsomest young man in England". Here it is:

 

Waikiki

 

Warm perfumes like a breath from vine and tree

Drift down the darkness. Plangent, hidden from eyes

Somewhere an 'eukaleli' thrills and cries

And stabs with pain the night's brown savagery.

And dark scents whisper; and dim waves creep to me,

Gleam like a woman's hair, stretch out, and rise;

And new stars burn into the ancient skies,

Over the murmurous soft Hawaian sea.

 

And I recall, lose, grasp, forget again,

And still remember, a tale I have heard, or known,

An empty tale, of idleness and pain,

Of two that loved -- or did not love -- and one

Whose perplexed heart did evil, foolishly,

A long while since, and by some other sea.

 

Done