calm & content

"There are moments—there have been several, 

especially in the Aegean—when, 

through some beauty of sky and air and earth, 

and some harmony with the mind,

peace is complete and completely satisfying. 

One is at rest from the world, and with it, entirely content, 

drinking to the full of the placidity of loveliness.   

Every second seems divine and sufficient.  

 And there are men and women who seem to do what one so terribly can’t, 

and so terribly at these moments, 

aches to do—store up reservoirs of this calm and content, 

fill and seal great jars or pitchers during these half-hours, 

and draw on them at later moments when the source isn’t there, 

but the need is very great. 

I wish there were more people of that character about on this expedition."

Rupert Brooke— from a letter written while sailing to Gallipoli in 1915