Rupert Brooke in Fiji

Just love Fiji Museum.  Was trying to find English poet Rupert Brooke's poems about Fiji without success so I wrote to Fiji Museum to ask if they knew them, and they didn't just send me poems, they even sent me extracts from his letters. 

Let me share a couple of these extracts and throw in a few of old friends Jon Apted and Johnson Seeto's photos so you can see for yourself if you too think the "Forever England" fellow nailed it:

 JON'S VIEW OF THE MOUNTAINS

 

  Jon's photos of Suva Harbour

JOHNSON'S VIEW OF THE MOUNTAINS

 

Johnson's photos of Suva Harbour

 

RUPERT BROOKE'S VIEW OF THE MOUNTAINS

"Fiji's ... more macabre (than Samoa). Across the bay (in Suva) are ranges of inky, sinister mountains, over which there are always clouds and darkness. No matter how fine or windy or hot or cheerful it may be in Suva, that trans-sinutic region is nothing but forbidding and terrible. The Greeks would have made it the entrance of the nether world—it is just what I've always imagined Avernus to be like."

Fun, huh!  So let's do another one:  this time Rupert Brooke talking about Fiji sunsets.

JON'S VIEW OF FIJI SUNSETS

 

 

 Jon's photos of Suva Harbour sunset.

JOHNSON'S VIEW OF FIJI SUNSETS

RUPERT BROOKE'S VIEW OF FIJI SUNSETS

"The sunsets here! The colour of the water over the reef! The gloom and terror of those twisted mountains! and the extraordinary contrasts in the streets and the near country ..."

I was planning to do another part on Suva Harbour by moonlight but getting more photos will have to wait.

JOHNSON'S VIEW OF FIJI MOONLIGHT

 Johnson's photo of the Transit of Venus.

RUPERT BROOKE'S VIEW OF FIJI MOONLIGHT

 "I shall go out and wander through the forest paths by the grey moonlight. Fiji in moonlight is like nothing else in this world or the next. It's all dim colours and all scents. And here, where it's high up, the most fantastically-shaped mountains in the world tower up all around, and little silver clouds and wisps of mist run bleating up and down the valleys and hillsides like lambs looking for their mother ... And then among it all are the loveliest people in the world, moving and dancing like gods and goddesses, very quietly and mysteriously, and utterly content. It is sheer beauty, so pure that it's difficult to breathe in it—like living in a Keats world, only it's less syrupy—Endymion without sugar. Completely unconnected with this world."

So what do you think?  Has the "Forever England" wordsmith captured our world with his words or not?

 I have actually seen more amazing photos of the mountains taken by Jon and Johnson but I simply can't find them.

Oh, and btw, both Jon and Johnson are putting their names on their gorgeous photos these days because they are cross at how many folks are stealing them, so please don't.