The Soldier: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 13:39, 8 August 2021

Poetry Index » By: Rupert Brooke (1915)

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.^[1] There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, 5
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam;
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less 10
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Notes and Commentary

↑ Brooke died of dysentery on a ship bound for Callipoli shortly after enlisting in the Royal Navy. He is buried on the Greek island of Skyros.

Works Cited

Norton . . .

[1] Brooke died of dysentery on a ship bound for Callipoli shortly after enlisting in the Royal Navy. He is buried on the Greek island of Skyros.

[1]