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Busy Heart, The by Rupert Brooke

Now that we've done our best and worst, and parted,

I would fill my mind with thoughts that will not rend.

(O heart, I do not dare go empty-hearted)

I'll think of Love in books, Love without end;

Women with child, content; and old men sleeping;

And wet strong ploughlands, scarred for certain grain;

And babes that weep, and so forget their weeping;

And the young heavens, forgetful after rain;

And evening hush, broken by homing wings;

And Song's nobility, and Wisdom holy,

That live, we dead. I would think of a thousand things,

Lovely and durable, and taste them slowly,

One after one, like tasting a sweet food.

I don't really understand the bolded part, there's just two sets of phrases without verbs, so can someone reword that line. Actually, I don't really understand the 6 lines before it. If someone could reword it without omitting any word and with complete understandable sentences it would be great. Is the author purposely omitting word, and what figure of speech is that?

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The sentence begins with "I'll think of..." several lines above your bolded phrases.

  • In poetry we often capitalize every line, even if they don't correspond to the beginnings of sentences.

  • In poetry we often place adjectives after nouns rather than before (as in "wisdom holy")

I don't really understand the 6 lines before it.

The sentence is just "I'll think of..." and a long list of things he'll think of.

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